Brian Tracy

Listening Wins Sales

This article is written by Brian Tracy to promote his Communicate With Power program.

Listening Wins Sales

By: Brian Tracy

There are books, articles and multi-day courses on listening. There are audio/video-learning programs that include hours of instruction and a variety of exercises. They are all valuable and helpful, but what they teach can be distilled down into a key skill. Your mastery of these skills, through discipline and practice, is all you need to become an excellent listener, with all that that entails.

Listen Attentively When Others Speak

Get Customers to Sell For You

Get Customers to Sell For You

By: Brian Tracy

Why People Buy

Fully 84 percent of sales in America take place as the result of word-of-mouth advertising. Some of the most important sales promotion and sales activities are those that take place between customers and prospects, between friends and colleagues, in the form of advice and recommendations on what to buy, or not buy, and who to buy from.

Join the Top 10%

Move Out of Your Comfort Zone

Move Out of Your Comfort Zone

By: Brian Tracy

Any change, or even an attempt to change anything you are doing, makes you uncomfortable. By attempting to change, you move out of your comfort zone. You feel increasingly uneasy. You experience stress and tension. If the change is too extreme, your physical and mental health can be affected. You will experience sleeplessness, indigestion, or fatigue. You may react with impatience, irritability or anger. You will often feel as if you are on an emotional roller-coaster.

Raise Your Internal Standards

Practice Golden Rule Selling

Practice Golden Rule Selling

By: Brian Tracy

To improve your sales performance, adopt the Golden Rule mentality. The Golden Rule says to, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It also says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The Golden Rule mentality in sales, says simply, "Sell unto others as you would have them sell unto you."

Different Strokes For Different Folks

What does this mean? Aren't there all kinds of different personalities that require different approaches and techniques? Well, yes and no. Practicing the golden rule in selling simply means that you sell to other people the way you would like to be sold to. You sell with the same honesty, integrity, understanding, empathy and thoughtfulness that you would like someone else to use in selling to you.

Seek First to Understand

If you would like a salesperson to take the time to thoroughly understand you and your situation before making a recommendation, you practice the same thing with your customers. If you would like a salesperson to give you honest information and to help you make an intelligent buying decision, you practice the same with your customer. If you would like a salesperson to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the strengths or weaknesses of his or her product or service, and that of his or her competitors, then you do the same with your product or service and your competitors.

Care About Your Customers

Perhaps the most important part of golden rule selling is the emotional component embraced in the word, "caring." Top sales professionals care about their customers. They care about themselves, their companies, their products and services, and they really care about helping their customers to make good buying decisions. If you think about the very best salespeople you know, you will recognize that they are caring individuals.

They Don't Care How Much You Know

If you think about your very best customers, you will recall that these are invariably people you care about, and who care about you. When you think about the people you buy from, you will recall that they seem to care about you more than the average. In every part of your business life, you will find that the significant people all have the denominator of caring as part of their character and their personalities.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, resolve today to sell to your customers with the same honesty, empathy and understanding that you would like them to use in selling to you.

Second, take time to genuinely care about your customers, their individual needs and their unique situations. Make people feel important and they will make you feel important.

Brian Tracy Resources

Power Networking

The Art Of Closing The Sale (affiliate link)

These training programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link   

The Toughest Job

The Toughest Job

By: Brian Tracy

There Are No Buffers

Selling is one of the toughest jobs in the world. There are no buffers between you and the reality of daily difficulties, delays and disappointments. You often ride an emotional roller-coaster, up and down, that never seems to stop. You are all alone.

You Must Motivate Yourself

Like a front line soldier, you must get yourself up every day and go out to where the bullets of rejection fly. You must continually deal with the possibility that all your sales efforts could turn out to be in vain through no fault of your own. And you must keep on going in spite of this because your profession of selling requires it.

Face the Facts of Selling

Selling is hard. It always has and it always will be. Even for the best and most experienced salespeople, it is a continual effort. You can make it easier by developing your skills in the critical areas of prospecting, presenting and closing sales, but you can never make selling an easy profession. However, once you accept that selling is a hard way to make a living, it somehow becomes a little easier. When you stop expecting it to be something other than it is, much of the stress of selling goes out of it. As William James said, "The first step in dealing with any difficulty is to be willing to have it so."

Open Unlimited Opportunities

Selling is also a wonderful profession. It offers opportunities for the average person that are unimaginable in most countries. Your potential earnings are beyond what 95 percent of the world's population could ever hope for or expect. Because selling is difficult, your activities are valuable and important and they have to pay you very well for carrying them out. As you move to the top of your field, you can earn more than a person with ten or twelve years of university education. You can eventually become financially independent. Fully five percent of self-made millionaires in America are salespeople who do their jobs extremely well.

Make a Wonderful Living

As a salesperson, the reason that you can make a wonderful living for yourself and your family, achieve your goals and fulfill all of your aspirations, is because making the sale is difficult, and often, extremely difficult. And the longer the sales cycle, or the larger the dollar amount involved, the more that companies have to pay salespeople to do the work. When you are selling complicated or expensive products in a highly competitive market, and you do it well, you can become one of the highest paid people in your field, if not the world.

Be the Best at What You Do

You should get up every morning and give a silent prayer of thanks that selling is so difficult. If it was easy, the field would be flooded by amateurs and the amount you could earn would be greatly reduced. But because it is hellishly hard, by becoming very good at it, your future can be unlimited!

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, dedicate yourself to getting better and better at selling. The better you get at selling and closing, the easier and more enjoyable it is.

Second, be grateful that selling is a tough job. It keeps the weaklings and the mediocre out of the field and enables you to be even more successful.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Art Of Closing The Sale (affiliate link)

This and many more training programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link.

The Key to Sales Success

This article is written by Brian Tracy to promote his Communicate With Power program.

The Key to Sales Success

By: Brian Tracy

Learn to Listen Well

A vital key to sales success is listening. The ability to listen well is absolutely indispensable for success in all human relationships. The ability to be a good listener in a sales conversation is the foundation of the new model of selling. It leads to easier sales, higher earnings and greater enjoyment from the sales profession.

Being A Good Talker is Not Enough

Identifying Top Salespeople

Identifying Top Salespeople

By: Brian Tracy

Salespeople are different based on their values. A higher order value always takes precedence over a lower order value. If you place one value higher than another, and you have to choose between doing one thing or doing another, you will always select the action that is consistent with your higher value. Once you are clear about your order of values, decision making becomes much easier.

What Are Your Real Values?

How can you determine what your values really are? Simple. Just observe your behaviors, especially the things you do when you are under pressure. Your values are always expressed in your actions. It is not what you say, or wish, or hope, or intend that expresses your true values. It is only what you do. If you want to know what your values are at this moment, you can examine your recent past and notice the choices you made when you could have gone one way or another. Your choices, and your subsequent actions, demonstrated to yourself and others what was of greatest value and importance to you.

Compare Different People

Here is an example. Imagine you have two people who have the same three values. The values are family, health and career success. The only difference between these two people is the order of importance that they placed on these values, their priorities. The first person, Bill, says that, "My family comes first, my health is second and career success is third."

Tom, on the other hand, has the same values, but he says, "Career success comes first for me, then my family, and then my health."

Determine the Difference

Would there be a difference in character and personality between these two people? Would there be a small difference or a large difference? Which of these two people would you like to get to know and become friends with? Would you be able to tell these two people apart in conversation? Which one do you think you would like and trust more?

Values Set People Apart

The answers to these questions are clear. The person with the higher values in a better order of priority will invariably be a better person than the person whose values are in a different order. Your choice of values determines the quality of your character. When you select values such as integrity, love, courage, honesty, excellence or responsibility, and you live your life consistent with those values, every hour of every day, you actually become a superior person. It is your values that determine the kind of person you really are.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, think about how you behave, how you choose, whenever you are under pressure. Remember, it is only what you do, your actions, that tell who you really are.

Second, observe how other people around you behave when they are forced to choose. You will only be compatible with people whose values are similar to yours. What are they?

Brian Tracy Resources

If you found this article helpful, take a look at the many training programs available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link.

Four Obstacles to Closing

Four Obstacles to Closing

By: Brian Tracy

Fear of Failure

There are several other reasons why the end game of selling is stressful and difficult. First and foremost is the fear of failure experienced by the prospect. Because of negative buying experiences in the past, over which you could have no control, prospects are conditioned to be suspicious, skeptical and wary of salespeople and sales approaches. They may like to buy, but they don't like to be sold. They are afraid of making a mistake. They are afraid of paying too much and finding it for sale cheaper somewhere else.

Fear of Criticism

They are afraid of being criticized by others for making the wrong buying decision. They are afraid of buying an inappropriate product and finding out later that they should have purchased something else. This fear of failure, of making a mistake in buying your product, is the major reason why people object, hesitate and procrastinate on the buying decision.

Fear of Rejection

The second major obstacle to selling is the fear of rejection, of criticism and disapproval experienced by the salesperson. You work long and hard to prospect and cultivate a prospective buyer and you are very reluctant to say anything that might cause the prospect to tune you out and turn you off. You have a lot invested in each prospect and if you are not careful, you will find yourself being wishy-washy at the end of the sale, rather than risking incurring the displeasure of the prospect by your asking for a firm decision.

Customers Are Busy

The third reason why the end of the sale is difficult is that customers are busy and preoccupied. It isn't that they are not interested in enjoying the benefits of your product. It's just that they are overwhelmed with work and they find it difficult to make sufficient time available to think through your recommendations and make a buying decision. And the better they are as a prospect, the busier they tend to be. This is why you need to maintain momentum throughout the sales process and gently push it to a conclusion at the appropriate time.

Inertia is Hard to Break

The factor of inertia is the fourth reason that can also cause the sales process to come to a halt without a resolution. Customers are lazy and often quite comfortable doing what they are currently doing. Your product or service may require that they make exceptional efforts to accommodate the change or a new way of doing things. They perhaps recognize that they would be better off with your product, but the trouble and expense of installing it hardly seems to make it worth the effort. They see no pressing need or urgency to stop doing what they are doing and start doing something else with what you are selling.

Everyone Buys at the Same Time

The good news is that everybody you meet has bought and will buy, new products and services from someone, at some time. If they didn't buy from you, they will from someone else. You must find the way to overcome the natural physical and psychological obstacles to buying and then hone your skills so that you are capable of selling to almost any qualified prospect you speak to.

Action Exercises

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, recognize the normal fear of making a buying mistake experienced by the customer. Give him every reason you can think of to be confident in dealing with you.

Second, accept that everyone you talk to is busy and you are interrupting. Always ask if this is a good time for him to give you his undivided attention. If not, arrange to see him another time.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Art Of Closing The Sale - "Ask for the order and close the sale!"

It's no secret -- selling is about results. If you can't close the sale, your efforts yield nothing.

My CD, The Art of Closing the Sale (affiliate link), will show you EXACTLY how to close more sales and get results.

This is and many more sales training programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link

Consulting Versus Selling

Consulting Versus Selling

By: Brian Tracy

View Yourself As A Consultant

One particular self-image possessed by high-achieving salespeople is that they see themselves as consultants rather than as salespersons. They see themselves as problem solvers with their products or services rather than as vendors looking for someone who will trade them money for what they have to offer.

Approach Them As Clients

They do not approach their customers with hat in hand, hoping for a sale. They approach their "clients" with the attitude that they are consultants calling on the prospect to help him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal.

Ask Questions and Listen Carefully

Seeing themselves as consultants, they ask questions carefully and listen intently. They focus all of their energies on understanding the customer's situation so that they can make intelligent recommendations based on what the customer really wants and needs.

Become An Expert in Your Field

As consultants, they recognize that they must be experts, authorities in their field. They know their products and services from one end to the other. They invest many hours familiarizing themselves with every single detail of what they sell, and of what their competitors sell as well. They know the strengths and weaknesses, the advantages and shortcomings, the features and benefits of what they are offering. They have excellent product knowledge which their customers can sense and which gives both themselves and their customers greater confidence throughout the sales conversation.

Differentiate Yourself from Your Competitors

Top salespeople, positioning themselves as consultants, see themselves as resources for their clients. They see themselves and carry themselves as advisors, mentors and friends. They become emotionally involved in their transactions and they are generally concerned that their product or service be the ideal solution to the real needs of the prospects they are dealing with. They differentiate themselves from their competitors by being more concerned with helping their prospects than with selling their products or services. Their customers often feel that they care more about them than they care about making a sale. And it's true.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, see yourself as a problem-solver rather than as a salesperson. Take sufficient time to understand the prospect's real need before you start selling.

Second, think of ways to tailor your product or service to your customer's needs so that he sees what you sell as the ideal solution for him.

Brian Tracy Resources

How To Deliver A Winning Presentation - Speak on Your Feet! Learn to influence and persuade others to take action.

Your ability to speak on your feet, to influence and persuade others to take action can move you ahead more rapidly than almost any other skill you can develop.

Would you like to learn this invaluable skill and dramatically improve your life and your career?

The good news is that everyone today who is a good speaker was once a poor speaker until they learned the techniques in my 30-minute DVD.

How to Deliver a Winning a Presentation

Join me for this training session and I will show you how to speak effectively, and influence and persuade others to take action!

These training programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link

  

Self-Esteem and Sales Success

This article has been written by Brian Tracy to promote his Change Your Thinking Change Your Life program.

Self-Esteem and Sales Success

By: Brian Tracy

The Reactor Core of Your Personality

Your self-esteem is the most important part of your character. This is the emotional part of your self-concept. It is the "reactor core" of your inner power. It is the emotional component of your life. It is the most important single element determining your attitude and your personality. It is the key to your success in life.

The Definition of Self-Esteem

The Secret of a Sales Manager

The Secret of a Sales Manager

By Brian Tracy

A friend of mine is a very successful sales manager. After he had carefully interviewed and then selected a new salesman, he would take the salesman to a Cadillac dealership and insist that he trade in his old car for a new Cadillac. The salesman would usually balk at the idea. He would be frightened of the cost of the car and huge monthly payments involved. But the sales manager would insist that he buy the Cadillac as a condition of employment. At first, the salesman would feel guilt for buying the car, but within a few days, he would begin to see himself as the kind of person who drove a new Cadillac. He would see himself as a big money earner in his field, one of the top performers in his industry. And time after time, almost without fail, the salespeople in this organization became sales superstars.

Create the Mental Equivalent

Emmet Fox, the spiritual teacher, once said, "Your main job in life is to create the mental equivalent within yourself of what you want to realize and enjoy in your outer world." Your focus must be on creating the beliefs within yourself that are consistent with the great success you want to be in your outer world. You achieve this by challenging your self-limiting beliefs, rejecting them, and then acting as if they did not exist.

Behave Consistent with Your New Self-Image

You develop new beliefs by taking actions consistent with those beliefs. You act as if you already believe that you have these capabilities and competences. You behave like a positive, optimistic, and cheerful person toward everyone. You act as if your success is already guaranteed. You act as if you have a secret guarantee of success and only you know about it. You realize that you are developing, shaping, and controlling the evolution of your own character and personality by everything that you do and say every single day.

Make a Decision

Make a decision this very day to challenge and reject any self-limiting beliefs that you might have that could be holding you back. Look into yourself and question the areas of your life where you have doubts about your abilities or talents. You might ask your friends and family members if they see any negative beliefs that you might have. Often, they will be aware of self-limiting beliefs you have that you are not aware of yourself. In every case, once you have identified these negative beliefs, ask yourself, "What if the opposite were true?"

Keep Your Words and Actions Consistent

Your beliefs are always manifested in your words and actions. Make sure that everything you say and do from now on is consistent with the beliefs that you want to have and the person that you want to become. In time, you will replace more and more of your self-limiting beliefs with self-enhancing beliefs.

Action Exercise

Imagine that you have the "golden touch" with money. If you were an extremely competent money manager, how would you handle your finances?

Brian Tracy Resources

Superior Sales Management - affiliate link

Success Mastery Academy

These and many other business training programs are available from BrianTracy.com (affiliate link)  

The Demonstration Close

Here is a nice short video of a younger Brian Tracy sharing a sales closing technique - the demonstration close which focuses on getting the buying to qualify themselves so you can demonstrate that you have a product or service they were prepared to commit to.

Less than 3 minutes long and well worth watching

  

The Invitational Close

The Invitational Close

By: Brian Tracy

The Invitational Close is simple, low-key, classy and powerful. You use it at the end of a sales conversation to conclude the transaction. It is preceded by a Trial Close such as: "Mr. Prospect, do you have any questions or concerns that I haven't covered up to now?" Or, "Mr. Prospect, does this make sense to you, so far?"

Probe for Lingering Objections

You ask these questions to be doubly sure that the prospect has no final objections lurking in the back of his mind that would block the closing of the sales process. You then invite the customer to make a buying decision by saying, "If you like what I've shown you, why don't you give it a try?"

Invite the Customer to Buy

Inviting the customer to buy is very powerful. This is a gentle way of nudging the customer into taking action. "Why don't you give it a try?" If you are selling services, you can ask, "Why don't you give us a try?" If you want to be more bold and direct, you can simply ask, "Why don't you take it?"

Change Your Wording

One of my seminar graduates doubled his sales by changing his words in the endgame of selling. After his sales presentation he would ask the prospect if he had any additional questions or concerns. If the prospect said "no," he would then ask, "Well, if you like it, why don't you take it?"

He was amazed to find that many prospects could not think of a good reason not to go ahead with his offering immediately. Both his closing ratio and his income soared.

Action Exercises

Here is something you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

The next time you complete your sales presentation, simply issue an invitation to the customer to make a decision. "Why don't you give it a try?"

You may be surprised at your success.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Art Of Closing The Sale (affiliate link)

This and many other training programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link.  

The Importance of Mental Fitness

The Importance of Mental Fitness

By: Brian Tracy

The Hard Work of Selling

Selling is hard work. It is one of the most difficult jobs in our economy. As a salesperson, you face continual rejection, potential failure, persistent disappointment, setbacks, obstacles and difficulties not experienced by most people. Selling is not easy and it has never been easy. It never will be easy. It will always be varying degrees of difficult, from hard to very hard, to very, very hard. And to be successful in selling you must be tough, as well.

Your Attitude Makes the Difference

In selling, your attitude is probably eighty percent of your success. Your attitude is the outward expression of everything that you are, and everything that you have become over the course of your lifetime. Your attitude has the greatest single impact on the people that you deal with. The development of a positive mental attitude is the indispensable requirement for great success in your field.

Learn to Bounce Back

Psychologists have defined the "hardy personality" as the type of personality that is most suited to the rigors of the , modern business world. The hardy personality, the personality you need to develop, is resilient, optimistic, tough, strong, and capable of bouncing back continually from temporary disappointments and defeats.

Respond Constructively to Stress

A positive mental attitude is a constructive response to stress. It is a solution-oriented, objective approach to difficulties that you face every single day. A positive mental attitude is expressed as a general optimism toward life and the inevitable challenges of earning a living. A positive mental attitude is the most outwardly identifiable quality of a winning human being, and it is the characteristic most closely identified with success in selling of all kinds.

Practice Mental Fitness Every Day

To become and remain physically fit, you must engage continuously in physical exercise. To become mentally fit, to develop the kind of attitude that leads on to success and happiness, you must engage in continuous mental exercise. It is a never ending process. Just as you do not achieve physical fitness and then discontinue physical exercise, you can not achieve mental fitness without working on it regularly, every day, like breathing in and breathing out.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, decide in advance that, from now on, you are going to respond in a positive and constructive way to each and every stress situation in your life. Be tough!

Second, practice mental fitness every day by forcing yourself to remain cheerful and optimistic in the face of difficulties and disappointments.

Remember, you can do it if you decide to!

Brian Tracy Resources

High Impact Telephone Selling

This program and many more are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link.  

Selling to Today's Customers

Selling to Today's Customers

By: Brian Tracy

What is selling? In its simplest terms, selling is the process of helping a person to conclude that your product or service is of greater value to him than the price you are asking for.

How Markets Work

Our market society is based on the principles of freedom and mutual benefit. Each party to a transaction only enters into it when he feels that he will be better off as a result of the transaction than he would be without it.

The Three Options

In a free market, the customer always has three options with any purchase decision. First, the customer can buy your product or service. Second, the customer can buy the product or service from someone else. Third, the customer can decide to buy nothing at all.

Convincing the Customer

For the customer to buy your particular product or service, he or she must be convinced that it is not only the best choice available but he must also be persuaded that there is no better way for him to spend the equivalent amount of money. Your job as a salesperson is to convince the customer that all these conditions exist and then to elicit a commitment from him to take action on your offer.

Customize Your Sales Presentation

The field of professional selling has changed dramatically since World War II. In a way, selling methodologies are merely responses to customer requirements. At one time, customers were relatively unsophisticated and poorly informed about their choices. Salespeople catered to this customer with carefully planned and memorized sales presentations, loads of enthusiasm and a bag full of techniques designed to crush resistance and get the order at virtually any cost.

Treat Them With Respect

But the customer of the 1950s has matured into the customer of the 21st century. Customers are now more intelligent and knowledgeable than ever before. They are experienced buyers and they have interacted with hundreds of salespeople. They are extremely sophisticated and aware of the incredible variety of products and services that are available to them, as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses of those products. Many of them are smarter and better educated than most salespeople and they are far more careful about making a buying decision of any kind.

The Need For Speed

In addition, they are overwhelmed with work and under-supplied with time. Because of the rapidly increasing pace of change, down-sizing, restructuring and the competitive pressures surrounding them, customers today are harried and hassled. They are swamped with responsibilities, impatient, suspicious, critical, demanding, and spoiled. To sell to today's customer requires a higher caliber of sales professional than has ever before been required. And it is only going to become tougher and more complicated in the months and years ahead.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, think continually about how you can convince your customer that your product or service is the very best available. Why does he buy, or refuse to buy?

Second, upgrade your knowledge and skills every day so you can sell more effectively. Remember, your customers only get better when you get better.

Brian Tracy Resources

How to Deliver a Winning Presentation

This and many more improvement programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link.   

Closed-Ended Questions

This article by Brian Tracy was written to help promote 24 Ways To Close More Sales.

Closed-Ended Questions

By: Brian Tracy

Start Sentences With Verbs

Closed-ended questions allow you to get definite answers and move toward closing the sale. Closed ended questions start with verbs, such as "Are," "Will," "Is," "Have," "Did," and even contractions such as "Aren't," "Didn't," and "Won't." This is often called a convergent question. It brings conversation gradually to a convergence on a single point or decision. It is answered with a "yes" or a "no." You use this question when you want to begin narrowing the conversation and getting specific answers that lead you to a conclusion or a commitment.

Solicit More Specific Answers

Nine Common Objections You Must Answer

Nine Common Objections You Must Answer

By: Brian Tracy

Unspoken Objections

The first type of objection you will get is an unspoken objection. The customer has concerns with you offering but doesn't tell you anything. The solution to unspoken objections is to let the prospect talk more. Ask open-ended questions, lean forward, and listen intently to the answers. The more a prospect has an opportunity to answer your questions; the more likely it is that she will tell you exactly what might be holding her back from buying.

Excuses, Excuses

The second form of objections is excuses. These are usually instinctive reactions to any sales approach. Excuses are not really serious. The best salespeople nod, smile, agree, and then ask a question to take control of the conversation. The very best way to handle any initial sales resistance, including excuses and impulse responses is with these words: "That's all right. Most people in your situation felt the same way when I first called on them. But now they have become our best customers, and they recommend us to their friends and family."

Malicious Objections

Then there are malicious objections. Because you call on many different people, you will occasionally call on individuals who are unhappy or angry about their current situations. Since they cannot shout at their bosses or spouses, they take it out on the friendly salesperson. These people tend to be negative in their demeanor and behavior. The way to deal with malicious objections is to realize that you are not the target. Your job, as a professional, is to remain calm, confident, positive, and polite throughout.

Request For Information

The fourth most common objection is a request for information. This is the best type of objection for you to hear, because you know how to answer this as well or better than any other part of your presentation. Whenever a prospect asks for information about the results or benefits of your product or service, you are moving into an excellent field position to make a sale.

Show—Off Objections

Another type of objection is the show-off objection. Sometimes prospects try to show you how much they already know about your product or service. They make sophisticated observations or ask you complex questions about your product, service or industry. When this happens, respond by taking the low road. Show how impressed you are by how much the prospect already knows. Remember, when you make a prospect feel important by listening to him with rapt attention, he is much more likely to warm up and buy from you.

Subjective Objections

The sixth most common type of objection is subjective or personal objections. These objections are aimed to you as a person. Whenever a prospect becomes critical of you, it could be a sign that you are talking too much about yourself. If this happens, it is important to make the customer the center of attention, and the subjective objections will stop.

Objective Objections

You may also hear the objective or factual objection. These are directed at your product offering and the claims that you make in terms of what it will do for the customer. If you can answer an objective objection, you can often close the sale.

General Sales Resistance

The eighth most common form of objection is what we have called general sales resistance. This always occurs at the beginning of a presentation. Until you neutralize this general sales resistance, the customer will be listening to you with a closed mind. When the prospect relaxes and gives you permission to ask him questions, you immediately begin your pre-selected open-ended questions to qualify the prospect and find out what he really needs that you can provide for him.

Last Ditch Objections

The final most-common objection is called the last-ditch objection. You have made your presentation, and the prospect clearly sees how she would be better off with your product or service. She knows and understands what you're selling and how much you're asking. She is on the verge of making a buying decision, but she still hesitates. Listen with respect to your final objections; then assure the prospect that yours is an excellent product or service, at a good price, and that everyone else who is using it today is very happy with their decision. You have then overcome the last-ditch objection.

Action Exercises

Hear the prospect out completely each time he objects or asks a question, practice all your listening skills.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Psychology Of Selling (affiliate link)

The Art Of Closing The Sale (affiliate link)

The sales training programs and many more are available from BrianTracy.com (affiliate link)   

Gap Analysis

Brian Tracy wrote this article to promote his Advanced Selling Techniques program.

Gap Analysis

By: Brian Tracy

Identify the Real Need of the Prospect

As a salesperson, you are in the business of gap analysis. You are a "problem detective." Your job, somewhat like a police inspector searching for suspects, is to find problems for which your product or service is the ideal solution. In a way, your product or service is a key. You make calls looking for locks that your key will open. In the prospecting phase, you insert the key and find that it fits. In the presenting phase, you twist the key and open the lock. In the closing phase, you turn the handle and push the door open.

Use Questions As Sales Tools

The Endgame to Selling

This article by Brian Tracy was written to help promote 24 Ways To Close More Sales.

The Endgame to Selling

By: Brian Tracy

In golf, there is a saying that, "You drive for show, but you putt for dough." In selling, you prospect and present for show, but you overcome customer skepticism and gain commitment for dough. Your ability to answer objections and get the sale is the true test of how good you really are as a salesperson.

The True Test of Selling

This is perhaps the most stressful and challenging part of the sales process. It's where the rubber meets the road. It is your ability to answer the questions that the prospect puts to you and overcome his natural reluctance to make a commitment that wraps up the sales process. It is also the part of the sales process that salespeople dislike the most and which customers find the most stressful.

Plan It in Advance

Building Long-Term Relationships

This article is written by Brian Tracy to promote his Communicate With Power program.

Building Long-Term Relationships

By: Brian Tracy

If you could take everything we know about communications, put it all in a large pot, boil it and distill it down into its critical essence, it is about the importance of relationships in successful selling. Building and maintaining long-term selling relationships is the key behavior and skill of the top ten percent of the money earners in sales, in every field, selling every product and service.

The Reason for Success

Most of your success in life will depend on your ability to get along well with other people, and on the quality of your relationships. Psychologist Sidney Jourard, found that 85 percent of a person's happiness in life comes from happy interactions with other people. The reverse holds true as well: 85 percent of a person's unhappiness or problems in life comes from difficulties in getting along with others.

Sell to Lots of People

Self-Image in Selling

Self-Image in Selling

By: Brian Tracy

Why Your Self-Image is a Key Part of Your Personality

Your self-image is the way you see yourself and think about yourself. It is often called your "inner mirror." You look into this mirror in every situation to see how you should perform on the outside. You always behave on the outside in a manner consistent with the picture you have of yourself on the inside.

How Do You See Yourself

For example, if you see yourself, as calm, confident and competent in any aspect of selling, when you are engaged in that activity, you will feel calm, confident and competent. You will be positive and happy. You will perform well and get excellent results. If, for any reason, it doesn't go well at that time, you will throw it off and dismiss it as a temporary situation. Your self-image is clear. In your mind's eye you see yourself as good and capable in that area, and nothing can interfere with your mental picture.

Change Your Self-Image

The most rapid improvements in sales results come from changing your self-image. The moment that you see yourself differently, you behave differently as well. And because you are behaving differently, you get different results.

My Own Story

Some years ago, when I was selling club memberships from office to office, I would end my presentation by giving the prospect a booklet outlining the membership benefits and encourage him to "think about it." My self-image was such that I could not bring myself to ask the prospect to make a buying decision. All day long, I would go from office to office giving my presentation and leaving a little book with descriptions to read. And as you might imagine, I was not making any sales. When I called people back after they had time to think about it, they would invariably say that they were not interested.

The Turning Point

I was getting desperate. I was living from hand to mouth at the time. Although I was seeing lots of prospects, I was making very few sales. Then I had a revelation which changed my career at the time. I realized that it was my fear of asking for the order that was causing all my problems. It was not my prospects. It was me. I needed to change my self-image and thereby change my behavior if I wanted results to improve.

Make A Decision

The very next morning, I made the decision that I would not call back on a prospect. The size of the purchase was small and, when I had completed my presentation, the prospect would know everything that he needed to know to make a decision. There was no benefit or advantage of leaving material behind or giving the prospect several days to think about it. At my very first call, and I still remember it, when I had finished my presentation, the prospect said, "Let me think it over." I smiled and told him that I did not make call backs because I was too busy, and then I said, "You know everything you need to know to make a decision right now. Why don't you just take it?" I remember him shrugging his shoulders and saying, "OK. I'll take it. How would you like to be paid?"

Double Your Earnings

I walked out of that office on a cloud. That very day I tripled my sales. That week, I sold more than anyone else in the company. By the end of the month, they had made me the sales manager with 42 people under me. I went from making one or two sales per week to making ten or fifteen sales per week. I went from worrying about money to a large salary with an override on the activities of all my salespeople. My sales life took off and, with few exceptions, it never stopped. And the turning point was that conscious choice to modify my self-image and make it more consistent with the results I wanted rather than the results that I was getting.

Action Exercises

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, begin to see yourself the way you want to be. See yourself as strong, confident, competent and professional in every way. The person you see is the person you will be.

Second, identify an area of selling where your own ideas about yourself and the situation are holding you back. You always perform on the outside the way you see yourself on the inside.

Brian Tracy Resources

Psychology Of Selling (affiliate link)

The Science Of Self Confidence (affiliate link)  

These Brian Tracy programs (and many more) are available from BrianTracy.com.
(affiliate link)

Be Prepared to Ask

Be Prepared to Ask

By: Brian Tracy

If you make a perfect presentation, one that clearly explains the benefits and resolves all the doubts that a qualified prospect might have, the sale will often close all by itself, like a ripe apple dropping out of a tree into your hand. You will conclude your presentation, check to be sure that the prospect has fully understood the benefits and value to him of the offer and the prospect will say something like, "It sounds good to me, how do I get it? Will you take a check?"

Don't Count on Miracles

When you are dealing with a prospect who knows exactly what he wants and you structure your presentation so that you demonstrate to him that your product fills his needs perfectly, he can make a buying decision and invite you to wrap up the sale. But this kind of result in selling is similar to a miracle: it's not that miracles don't happen, it's just that you can't depend on them.

Be Prepared in Every Situation

You must go into every sales situation prepared for the likelihood that your prospect will have questions unanswered, concerns unresolved and objections to be overcome. Simultaneously, you must know a variety of ways to ask for the order at different points in the sales process, and you must be capable of recognizing which closing technique is most appropriate at any given time.

Like a master craftsman, you need a variety of tools with which to do excellent work. The best salespeople are invariably those who are the most skilled in the fine points of bringing the sales conversation to a positive conclusion.

Build the Relationship First

Your first job in the sales conversation, and throughout all of your interactions with the customer, is to build and maintain a relationship. It is to come across in a friendly way, to be warm, supportive, knowledgeable and completely focused on helping the customer to solve a problem or achieve a goal with your product or service.

Be Positive, Polite, and Persuasive

Because of the importance of trust in modern selling, you are never pushy, obnoxious or overly aggressive. You never to or say anything that can be construed as manipulative. You never attempt to influence your prospect to act contrary to his best interests. Your job is to thoroughly understand his situation and to give good recommendations that enable him to make the right buying decision.

Action Exercises
Here are two things that you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, be prepared to close the sale quickly and smoothly, and get out, when it is clear the customer is ready to buy. This is your job. Don't hesitate.

Second, be sure that you keep your eyes on the quality of the relationship throughout. Avoid using pressure or manipulation so you can always come back again later.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Art of Closing the Sale (affiliate link)

The Key to Making More Money Faster in the World of Professional Selling

Now, for the first time in one book, you can learn the most important strategies and techniques for closing the sale ever discovered.

The Art of Closing the Sale teaches the learnable skills that anyone can use to transform the sales process into a consistent win. This book is an absolute must-read for every sales professional seeking to boost their career and create a future of success.
 

These Brian Tracy programs (and many more) are available from BrianTracy.com.
(affiliate link)

Marketing vs. Selling

Marketing vs. Selling

By Brian Tracy

Marketing and selling are two separate activities. Marketing is the process of lead generation. Marketing embraces everything you do up to the point of sale. The design, development, and determination of the exact product or service that you are going to sell are the first part of marketing. The second is to think through every element of the marketing mix before you begin. These elements are product, price, promotion, packaging, positions, and people.

Product/Service

What exactly is your product or service? What does it do for your customer? How does it improve his or her life or work? What products or services are you going to offer? Any changes in the product or service offered can dramatically change the entire nature of your business.

Price

How much are you going to charge for your product? Will you sell wholesale or retail? How do your prices compare with those of your competitors? Are they higher or lower? How do you justify your prices, whatever they are?

Place

Where exactly are you going to locate your business? Where are you customers? Do you sell from a retail storefront or by telephone and Internet from your offices?

Promotion

How do you advertise and attract customers? Once you have attracted potential customers, what is the specific sales process that you use to convert those prospects into customers? What systems do you use for developing and maintaining successful sales process to get customers to buy from you?

Packaging

What do your product or service, place of business, and every other visual element of your company look like to your customers? Customers are extremely visual. They form their first impression about you and your company within four seconds of seeing you for the first time. Looking from the outside, is every part of the customers visual experience with regard to your company excellent in every way?

Positioning

How are you positioned in the minds and hearts of your customer? What words to your customers use when they talk about you and describe you to others? If your name were mentioned in a customer survey, how could customers and non customers refer to you and your business?

People

Who exactly are the people who interact with your customers? What do they look like? How do they dress? What do they say? Prospective customers are largely emotional. They make most of their decisions based on the way they are treated by the people in your organization. What kind of "people experience" do customers have when they deal with you? How could it be improved?

Action Exercise

Determine what you will have to do to get your customers to give you a nine or ten score on the question, "Based on your experience with us, would you recommend us to your friends and family?"

Brian Tracy Resources

Selling High Priced Products Against Low Priced Competition - "Increase Your Sales and Income Immediately!"

Do you ever wonder how luxury cars and designer handbags continue to fly off the shelves…even when the economy is bad? It's because price isn't the only reason why people buy.

Learn how to separate your product from the competition and give your clients great reasons to buy—that have nothing to do with how much it costs!

The Power of Branding

Your company's brand or even your own personal brand is what separates you from your competition. And it's what will get your customers to buy from you over and over again.

Get more sales, be promoted quickly and earn MORE money than ever before when you spread the word about the best brand in town—YOURS!
 

These Brian Tracy programs (and many more) are available from BrianTracy.com.
(affiliate link)

Unlimited Possibilities

Unlimited Possibilities

By: Brian Tracy

You can always get a better deal if you know how. You never need to settle for less or feel dissatisfied with the result of any negotiation. There is almost always a way that you can get better terms or prices, whether you are buying or selling. Your job is to find that way.

If You Want a Better Deal, Ask for it

The word "ask" is the most powerful word in the world of business negotiating. Most people are so paralyzed by the fear of rejection and disapproval that they are afraid to ask for anything out of the ordinary. They just accept what is offered to them and hope for the best. But this is not the case with top negotiators. The top negotiators will quite calmly and confidently ask for any kind of price or term that is remotely within reason. You will be quite astonished at the better deals you will get by simply asking for a lower price if you're buying and asking for a higher price if you're selling.

Real Estate Salesmen

One of my seminar graduates is a real estate salesman who buys houses. He works within a specific price range that looks at every home in that price range and comes on the market. His strategy is simple. Whatever the asking price, he offers 50 to 60 percent of that amount in cash, with no conditions. His offers all come with a short time limit. He gets turned down dozens of times. However, about one time in a hundred, he finds a motivated seller, a seller who is eager to sell immediately, and the seller will accept his offer. His secret is simple. He just asks people to sell their houses at far lower prices than anyone else would ever dare.

Surprise and Disappointment

Whatever the suggested price, react with surprise and disappointment. Remember, most people have plucked the price out of the air. They are always asking for more than they expect to get or offering less than they expect to pay. In either case, you should flinch and react with mild shock, no matter what the price or the offer. Appear hurt, as if the person has just said something cruel or unkind that was totally uncalled for. Then ask, "Is that the best you can do?" And remain perfectly silent. Almost every price has a built in cushion of available discount, and very often the salesperson will drop to that price with one painful flinch on your part.

Better Somewhere Else

Always imply that you can do better somewhere else. There is nothing that causes a seller's price to drop faster than saying that you can get the same item cheaper from another source. This shakes the self-confidence of the salesperson, who immediately feels that he or she is going to lose the deal and often cuts the price quickly.

Action Exercises

Negotiating is a skill that you can master with practice. Take every opportunity you can find to negotiate on smaller items, especially in situations where you don't really care about the outcome. Go to swap meets and garage sales and offer fractions of the asking price. You will be amazed how quickly you become skilled at getting better prices.

Brian Tracy Resources

Negotiate The Best Deal (affiliate link) - "Would you like to gain or save 20% of all money that goes through your hands during your life time?"

Do you know that everything is negotiable? If there is a price involved, it's negotiable! I have studied for years the techniques and tactics of negotiation and I'll share with you some personal secrets and real life stories of how I have turned negotiating skills into an art form.

The Way To Wealth System (affiliate link) - "Here is a Proven Way to Create the Financial Independence You Desire"

…So You Can Quit Your Job…And Never Have To Worry About Money EVER Again! With an entrepreneurial attitude—and the millionaire success secrets revealed in this system—you can break through the ceiling and earn wealth beyond your wildest dreams.
  

These Brian Tracy programs (and many more) are available from BrianTracy.com.
(affiliate link)

Time Management Techniques for Salespeople

Time Management Techniques for Salespeople

By Brian Tracy

In 1928, the magazine Sales and Marketing Management surveyed American Businesses to determine how efficiently salespeople were using their time. They discovered that the average salesperson in America was only working 20 percent of the time, approximately one and one-half hours per day. This finding caused bells to go off throughout the sales industry. The idea that salespeople were only working ninety minutes per day became the emphasis for improved training, better time management skills, better supervision, and better control of the activities of salespeople.

Double Your Sales

In my sales programs, I teach what I call my minutes theory. It is based on a simple equation. If you are in sales today, 100 percent of your sales and your income are generated by the number of minutes hat you spend face-to-face with prospects and customers. If you want to increase the number of sales or the amount of money you make, you must increase the number of minutes that you spend in actual selling activity, face-to-face with people who can, and will, buy from you. My theory says that if you double the number of minutes that if you spend with customers, you will double your income, even if you do not improve in any other area of sales. If you manage your time as the top salespeople do, so that you are spending more time with customers, your sales will increase immediately.

The Job of the Salesperson

Let us begin with the job description of the salesperson. The job description of the salesperson is to create and keep customers. The measure of effectiveness of a salesperson is how many new customers she creates, or resales she generates, in any given time period. Everything else that salesperson does is secondary to creating and keeping customers. Therefore, the only time a sales person is working is when he is face-to-face, head-to-head, and knee-to-knee with a prospect or customer.

Begin with Clear Income and Sales Goals

Achieving Peak Performance and excellent time management in sales begins with your setting clear income and sales goals for yourself. The act of sitting down and deciding, in writing, how much you want to earn, and how you are going to go about earning it, makes it far more likely that you will achieve those goals than if you didn't set them at all. The goal-setting exercise I am about to share with you has led to the doubling and tripling of the incomes of many salespeople. It is powerful because it is simple and easy. You can learn it and apply it immediately.

Determine What You Will Have to Do

Once you have broken your income and sales goals down into monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly amounts, you then define these goals in terms of the activities necessary to achieve them. The critical element in this calculation is the factor of control. You cannot control your income or your sales on a day-to-day basis. They depend on too many other factors. But you can control your activities. You can determine and control what you do from morning to night, and as a result, you can indirectly control your income. If you engage in the activities necessary to make sales you want to make, you will inevitably achieve your sales goals.

Get Better at What You Do

Once you have determined your sales goals and worked out an activity schedule for each day, you immediately go to work on yourself to upgrade your skills in your key result areas. One of the best uses of your time is to get better at the most important things you do. Your goal is to upgrade your skills so that you achieve more and better results in a shorter period of time.

Action Exercise

Take charge of your sales career today; resolve to double the amount of time you spend face-to-face with prospects and customers.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Psychology Of Selling  (affiliate link) - "Increase Your Sales and Double Your Income--Guaranteed!"

This program is now the best-selling audio program on sales in the history of the world—more salespeople have become millionaires after listening to The Psychology of Selling than through any other influence in the sales world. Learn the same techniques and double your income--guaranteed!

These Brian Tracy programs (and many more) are available from BrianTracy.com.
(affiliate link)