19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling (3 of 4)

Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In today's episode, we continue our 4-part series with part 3 of the Dan Kennedy course, 19 Secrets of Exceptional Results Selling. Now, if you've missed any of the previous sessions, I highly recommend going back and listening through step by step. Part 1, we talked a lot about the mindset and which mindsets not only you should have, but what your salespeople should avoid just as much. In part 2, we talked about how do you deal with the difficult realities that are faced in selling, such as tough times and rejection, and the tendency of prospects to be cynical and untrusting. And in this episode, Dan Kennedy talks about the importance of selling throughout your entire presentation, how to set yourself apart from the competition, and how to sell high-ticket items tactfully. These lessons are timeless. And so as you listen, pay attention to the one thing that might change your business today and install it. Let's listen in.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril.

They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by.

Dan opened my eyes to what what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

What about selling big ticket items?

Well, that's mostly what I do personally these days. My initial consulting days fee is $3,850, most projects more, plus royalties. A typical all-inclusive budget for production of a video brochure or TV infomercial will run from $70,000 to twice that. My copywriting fees for ads or sales letter campaigns start at $5,000, and my base speaking fee is $3,850. To somebody selling private planes or month-long luxury cruises, these may not be big ticket, but compared to a great many product and service price points, they are. Anyway, I think the first point about big-ticket selling is that selling is selling, people are people, and the fundamentals don't change. But then there are some specifics. For example, you have to determine whether yours is going to be a negotiated sale or a non-negotiated sale.

What's the difference?

Well, is your price negotiable? In most cases, mine is not. Recently, after considerable discussion, I quoted a man a fee for his project of $24,000. He came back 2 days later with a slightly altered description of the tasks involved and offered $5,000. He's been a negotiator in commercial real estate all his life and probably views himself as a shrewd, tough negotiator. Unfortunately, I wasn't making a negotiated sale. My reply was, "I did not offer a proposal. I quoted a fee. I try to position myself as the lawyer or the brain surgeon, a professional with whom you do not negotiate fees." If you are going to make a negotiated sale though, then you need to integrate negotiation strategies with selling strategies. If price is going to be negotiated, then the way you present price becomes extremely important. Personally, I like to discount it once voluntarily to try and cut off or minimize additional price negotiation. I've used verbiage something like this. Now the regular off-the-street rate for this is X dollars, but our long-term repeat clients frankly only have to pay Y dollars. I think you and I are going to be working together for some time to come, so I'm going to give you the Y rate right now. That creates a deduction of B dollars from the price of A dollars. Your net is only C dollars.

Now what's the most important technique for making the negotiated sale?

The willingness not to make the sale. Just about any negotiating expert will tell you that the person most willing to walk away without a deal has the most power. Unfortunately, in a seller prospect situation, rather than two equals negotiating a deal, the seller is replaceable. So the buyer is almost always the one most willing to walk away, and you can't truthfully trump that. But you can be okay with walking away. 2 keys. 1, you have to have enough flow of good prospects coming to you that you honestly feel, hey, there's another bus coming just around the corner. 2, you have to know that a client or customer obtained through too much compromise is bound to become a problem later. At some point, you have to say to yourself, let my competitor have them. They deserve each other. You cannot have to or want to close the sale at any price under any terms. If that's your actual or mental and emotional position, you're soon going to be walking around with bloody stumps. My preference is to negotiate to try and make the deal, but not to negotiate to beat competition. I know I'm starting to sound redundant, but this brings us back to positioning. If your prospect has come to you predisposed to do business with you, then negotiation really becomes teamwork. You both want the deal to happen. He has certain limitations. You have certain minimums and requirements. Negotiation is finding a way to satisfy each other. That is a much more manageable kind of negotiated sale than one where you are a competitive bidder or competitive presenter and the prospect can play one against the other. You can't tell if you're being told the truth about the others, and you are obviously easily replaceable. That's a very unpleasant selling environment. And if that's the kind of environment you work in now, were I you, my priority would be to change it one of three ways. Change the way you attract prospects, change the entire game from apples to apples to apples to oranges, or three, find a new company to sell for in a different industry.

Now what else is unique about big-ticket selling?

The quality of the relationship probably matters more. Although I, I'd rather not plant an obstacle in anybody's mind, we're not in most cases talking here about first call closes. Instead, the sales pro and prospect are probably going to have several conversations, several meetings, maybe a lunch, dinner, golf course meeting, in-office meeting, so rapport skills take on increased importance. I'm told that the average length of time it takes to sell a jet to a company is 2.5 years. During that time, that salesperson is undoubtedly wining and dining and meeting with that decision maker or decision makers a number of times. Still, I'd again emphasize that all the fundamentals are always at play, and if you go back and look at the E-Factors, for example, the sale of that jet is going to involve every one of them.

Now, what's the biggest sale you've ever made?

Oh, I've I've made and make a number of them in the $25,000 fee range, $100,000 total budget range. Back when I was selling books, I wrote the largest new order in the department store category in the history of the company. For a client, I once sold Holiday Inns on putting up over $1 million of research and development money. And I once did a $990,000 reverse sale, sold a board of directors on giving me control of a $1 million corporation for $10.. But the dollar amounts are not all that relevant when taken out of context. The decision of a small business owner who has never spent more than $10,000 a month on advertising to pony up $50,000 for an infomercial is tougher for him and a tougher sale than getting $1 million out of a company the size of Holiday Inn. In every case, I've carefully built my case so that I could argue such an overwhelming value to the other party that they just couldn't sensibly say no. I don't know that every salesperson can set up such an argument, but that's always been my approach, and it's the kind of approach I'd recommend first.

What are your feelings about making by-name comparisons to your competitors?

I would caution against selling by degrading competitors. If it's overdone, it's the equivalent of saying, hey, everybody's lousy, but we're not quite as lousy as they are. And that's not a very exciting position to stake out. I think you sell primarily from your own strengths with a carefully constructed package of benefits, value, proof, and service that does beat the competition. And again, given my druthers, I'll be selling in a vacuum anyway. On the other hand, there are times when comparison to competitors is inevitable and must be done, sometimes point by point. I'll tell you about a little trick for those situations. Let the competitor win somewhere a little. You know, Al, to be honest, they do a slightly better job of inventory backup than we do. They probably same-day ship 90% of the time. We same-day ship only about 50% of the time, the rest within the week. But if you'll just plan ahead a little, we can work together without a hitch. And then there's all these other benefits. I think you gain believability by such damaging admission. I do favor head-to-head comparisons when you can actually demonstrate superiority. I mean, when it's visual, dramatic, and inarguable. As a pup, I spent some time in the Amway business, and we had some really terrific demonstrations. Their laundry compound versus Tide, stir each in its own glass of water, Tide stayed gray with all sorts of ugly gunk separating and floating around. That's all the filler that's in there, which does wear out your clothes pretty prematurely. There's sawdust and shredded paper. Amway stuff disappeared. The water was clear, and the end of the demo was to take a hefty drink from the Amway jar and offer the customer a drink of her Tide. It was a killer. Another, the safety of furniture polishes. Most store-bought aerosol furniture polishes' propellants are highly flammable. Spray just a little bit in a jar lid, toss in a match, and whoosh, you've got a bonfire. But then you could use ours as a fire extinguisher to put theirs out. Which do you want coating all the wood in your house? I started a house fire doing that demo once, by the way. Now, if I had equally dramatic demos for a given product, be it a $100 item or a million-dollar item, I'd certainly use them. But if you're going to do it, be certain the demo is perfect. The best trump of competition, though, is positioning. Price, no object. Everybody'd rather deal with the best, the one everybody else prefers dealing with. So if you can create that kind of aura, that kind of visibility, and be price competitive, you're going to win every time. That strategy integrates marketing, advertising, PR, and sales, and rarely can the salesperson make it happen all by himself. On the flip side, the salesperson himself can make himself the issue. The difference, "You get me," can be a powerful argument. I watched a guy selling very sophisticated software system installations, and part of his pitch was, "You get my office's 24-hour-a-day support number. Call at 2 o'clock in the morning and the person who answers is going to be ready and able to help you with any glitch. But if that doesn't satisfy you, then you can call my 24-hour-a-day roving 800 number." I'll either answer you or call you back within 30 minutes. And if for some weird reason I don't, you get my personal pager number for emergencies. I can run, but I can't hide. I don't even take the pager off when I sleep. You got me. Well, that's pretty powerful. Actually, I'll tell you what it says. It says this guy's darn sure of the quality of his installations and the skills of his support people. Or he wouldn't dare make himself this accessible.

When you're trying to set yourself apart from a whole bunch of competitors, what do you do?

I start by looking at those E-Factors we talked about. In the infomercial industry, I use fear a lot. I say, you know, there are lots and lots of people who can produce beautiful videos. They've come over from the entertainment industry, movies, regular video production, and ad agencies. But can they sell anything? Most do not know enough about direct sales and direct response advertising to fill a thimble. So if you're not careful, you'll wind up with an award-winning documentary. And here's my advice: no matter who you use, what production team you assemble, please make sure somebody's in charge who knows the fundamentals of making a sale by direct response. Now, by saying all that, that way I haven't slammed any particular competitor and I haven't boastfully sold myself, but I've planted a great big fat seed of doubt. I've played on fear, and I happen to have given good advice. Years ago, I was at a bar with a client and another guy, all three of us single. The other guy got his sights set on a drop-dead gorgeous woman across the room and announced his intentions of going over and getting a date with her. My client, a masterful salesman, went to work on him. "Man, you don't want to do that. Women that beautiful, that Hollywood, well, they're impossible to please. And they're not at all eager to please you. And you always have to worry about who's hitting on them, or who makes more money than you do, or who dresses better than you do, or who drives a fancier car than you do. You'll never have a moment's peace of mind. Then when the guy slunk off to the restroom to recover, my client zoomed over there and got her phone number. He planted doubt and fear in that guy's mind and let it do its job. Without ever knocking your competition, you can plant seeds of doubt and fear that will then bloom and blossom all on their own. It doesn't take much for a negative thought to multiply. There's a lot to be said for being the safe choice. You also want to find a way to highlight competition's weakness against a strength you have. If you're David against Goliath, it's, you know, the Goliath company is a great company, a really formidable competitor. The only thing is they've gotten so big in the last few years and seem to be giving their attention to really big clients, that some smaller companies just don't get equal attention. You know, there's a trade-off for a company like yours in having a relationship with a giant like that. On the other hand, to an organization like ours, you're frankly a major account, and we can grow together, and you can count on being treated as a VIP, and so on. But if you're Goliath against a David, you have to flip all that around. You know, the David Company is a great company. I hear they really provide great service, and we do see them as a formidable competitor. It's just unfortunate that as small as they are, they just can't have all the backup inventory, the extra service techs standing by to respond within an hour, those kinds of advantages that may be important to you. There's a trade-off to doing business with the little guy. You may get a bit more personal attention, but— and so on. We have a car dealer here about 70 miles outside of Phoenix. He advertises in Phoenix a lot and basically says, look, admittedly we're way the hell out here in nowhere land and you're going to have to drive for an hour or so just to get to us, but because we're out here in nowhere land, our overhead's much lower than all those fancy-pants dealers with the big edifices in the middle of the city. It costs less to do business out here and to live out here. Frankly, we need every sale we can get. So, we'll pass every penny of our savings on to you. Drive a little, save a lot. See, they flipped their disadvantage into their competitive advantage, and that's smart.

What about the time cycle of the big ticket sale?

Well, like we talked about before, I mean, 2.5 years to sell a jet. In a lot of business and industrial settings, there is no single decision maker. You have to sell through one to others. Get consensus, and so on. All that extends the time between first contact and done deal, and you're very vulnerable that entire time. So it just makes good sense to creatively look at every possible way you might forcibly shorten the time lapse. Now, don't sit there and say, 'That's just the way it is in this business.' With that kind of thinking, you'd be lighting your office with a bigger candle. Nothing ever has to stay as it is., you can introduce some new dynamic and change the rules. I work with a client that gets business by bid for very complicated industrial equipment renovation jobs. A few years ago, he stopped doing free bids. He charges $1,000 to do the estimate. That worked okay, but his other nagging annoyance was 6 months or longer to get a yes, no, or otherwise after bidding. We did a very simple thing: you get the $1,000 rebated only if you proceed with a contract within 29 days of bid. Before, less than 10% closed that fast. Now, nearly 30% close that quickly.

Let's say I'm in some kind of big-ticket selling and I want to double my income this year over last year.

What do I do? Well, we just named one thing, so let's start there and kind of go backwards. You reduce the time lapse between first contact and done deal. Close sales faster. Next, if you're doing negotiated sales, employ every creative idea possible to keep the prices or fees on the high side, not the low side, so you achieve a higher dollar average per sale. Next, create a position and a package of benefits that makes you the preferred choice. Last, stop prospecting in the conventional sense and set up magnetic marketing systems that furnish you with prospects predisposed to doing business with you. Spend your time meeting with people as a trusted advisor, not as a salesman. Combine all that and you get a higher dollar amount per sale, so even if you made the same number of sales this year as last, your dollar total will be higher. You complete each sales process in a shorter period of time, so some that would be in play at year's end but not completed until the following year have to fall into the current year, more sales this year than last. You are consistently investing your time in higher probability prospects, so your closing average should improve, also equaling more sales this year than last. If each of the three accounts for a one-third improvement, you double.

How about real estate or insurance, relatively big-ticket sales to consumers rather than to purchasing agents and executives? Now, what's most important there?

Agreement on the parameters of what they want and what will satisfy them before ever prescribing product. If you're going to approach these selling situations like a peddler with a big bag of assorted products— hey, here, look at this. No? Well, look at this. No? Well, how about this?— you're going to waste mountains of time. Instead, you have to ask smart Ask smart diagnostic questions. Then get definitive agreement on what they need and want. Okay, it has to have 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a large kitchen, and be close to a shopping mall. Those are the 4 most important characteristics. Then 4 more optional but preferred characteristics are— and the price range is X to Y and no more than Y. So if I took you to a home that had all 4 of the musts and say 2 of the 4 options, and could be bought for X and a half, on a 1 to 10 scale, what are the odds you'd buy it without more shopping around? Okay, Bob and Mary, you've got 3 different insurance policies with 2 different agents, an IRA account, and a savings account. Let's back up one step. What are the 3 most important objectives you have for saving and investing? 1, 2, and 3. Which is most important? Next most important. Great. Now let me first show you why what you are doing doesn't match up well with these objectives. Next, let's describe the ideal savings or investment tool. You would have this as feature 1, this as feature 2, this as feature 3. Now we have a list of 6 must-have features plus a few options. If I showed you an investment device that met all 6 of the musts and most of the options. On a 1 to 10, what are the odds you'll close all the other accounts, cancel the policies, and put everything into this plan? Now I've made those examples faster and more simplistic than they would be in real dialogue, but you get the idea. I want pre-agreement on what it takes to score. I sure don't want to move the ball all the way down the field, get it over the goal line, and then have the ref Hey, back 4 plays ago, you had a guy run crosswise. He can't do that. See, rules first, play second.

It's simple. You keep using terms from worlds other than selling— diagnose, prescribe. For example, why?

The best way to achieve exceptional results in selling is not to have to do any selling at all. The prospect comes to you predisposed to do business with you thanks to your front-end advertising and marketing. Then you serve as a diagnostic consultant and trusted advisor. The sale happens. It's not made, as in forced. It happens, as in natural, as in the only logical, natural possible outcome.

Let's talk about closing the sale, getting the ball across the goal line.

To lapse into sports parlance. My speaking colleague Zig Ziglar says timid salesmen have skinny kids. I am unceasingly amazed at the sales professionals who turn soft when it comes time to lay out the offer and ask for the order. About a week ago, I was speaking at a 2-day conference. The evening of the first day, the first-day speaker, a very well-respected, celebrated expert in his field, had a pretty good the first speaker had, to an audience of about 60 business owners, sold only one of his business cassette packages. One. That night I sold 32 sets of mine, just shy of $8,000. The first speaker of the next day sold nothing. How could that be? The conference sponsor identified the reason instantly. To me he said, "You're the only one who directed them to buy and to buy now." This important principle applies to person-to-person selling, group presentations, even salesmanship in print, direct response advertising. You have to methodically move to the delivery of a straightforward, clear, directive close. Now, this applies to one-on-one selling in any environment. Salespeople convince themselves they have to make repeat calls before closing a sale. They have to go slow. And many may seem perfectly satisfied with the "I'll think it over" conclusion of a meeting. And you may very well be one of these salespeople eager to argue that in your industry, you just cannot close. You have to be very patient, take your time, go back and see the buyer several times, and let him set the pace. Well, go ahead and cling to that belief if you like, but I'm here to tell you it's costing you money. As a consultant, a sales trainer, and a temporary salesman, I've gone into industries where closing, especially first-call closing, is just not done and done it. When W. Clement Stone insisted that the sale is contingent on the attitude of the salesperson, not the attitude of the prospect, I think he hit more than one nail squarely on the head, and this is one of them. Your attitude toward closing sales is the controlling factor in how soon, how easily, and how successfully you close sales. This even applies to trade show selling. During the one and only year I worked for a company other than my own, book publishing company, is the first trade show I'd ever worked was for them at the annual Chicago Gift Show at McCormick Place. I was told just to glad-hand and get catalogs out. You can't sell much at shows. And so on. Stubbornly, to the annoyance of some of my new colleagues, I wrote orders right then and there for more business than all of them added together. I opened brand new accounts and I got opening orders right there on the trade show floor. Why? First, I ignored all the conventional wisdom. Second, I structured a desirable offer and presented it persuasively. Three, I asked for orders. To again quote, in this case paraphrase Zig, he says, "Too many salespeople aren't salespeople at all. They're professional visitors." I think most salespeople are wimps when it comes to asking for the order, and selling is no place for wimps. In recent years, unfortunately in my opinion, this selling wimpiness has even been encouraged by a number of experts, authors, speakers, sales trainers, psychologists, expounding on topics like relationship selling, non-manipulative selling, the soft sell, and an almost endless stream of psychobabble. Many of these psychobabblers haven't been out there really selling for years. Some have never been out there. They have lots of touchy-feely ideas and theories, but when applied in real selling situations, it all falls apart like a cheap suit. Many companies and sales organizations have been too quick to welcome these ideas, and if you carefully analyze these organizations, you'll see that their sales cycle, the time that elapses between first contact and first closed sale, has lengthened. That means that the corporation's cost of sales and cost of acquiring a customer has increased or worsened, and the salesperson's its time cost of selling has also worsened. American business has been oddly eager to accept new fads. I say beware of fads. When I study a top sales performer today, I definitely see more similarities with top sales pros of 20 years ago than with the psychological fads of the moment. Some 20 years ago, a grizzled vet said to me, here's all you need to know about selling, Here's the ABCs of selling: always be closing. These days when I structure a sales presentation, I am closing from the beginning, closing throughout, and trying to set up the automatic close. I am literally always closing. I think you have to be very clear about why you're there, why you're making a presentation, and that ought to be to make a sale. Oh sure, you want to make a friend. You want to build a relationship. You want to accomplish a whole host of secondary objectives. But I insist that above all else and before most things, you want to make the sale. I think too many people go out on calls without a very specific predetermined objective, without a definition of what will constitute success in that particular situation. Personally, I detest think-it-overs. Because I so highly value my time, I would much rather have a definite no If I can't get a definite yes, then an indefinite maybe. With the no, I know where I stand and I can move on. With a maybe, I do not know where I stand and I can, and many salespeople do, con myself into believing I'm in better shape than I really am. So I don't work as hard because I'm convinced I'll be cashing in my think-it-overs any day now. If you find a salesperson with a big fat bank of pending deals, of think-it-overs, you will never find an exceptional achiever. You may be able to make yourself feel good with a maybe, but no matter how many maybes you've got, your bank balance doesn't change. Oh, and incidentally, only a very small percentage of think-it-overs ever convert. I've discovered that most of them move to Think-It-Over Iowa, never to be seen again. In Think-It-Over Iowa, you can actually see cobweb-covered skeletons clutching menus sitting in diners and restaurants. They perished, wasted away while trying to decide what to order. Every traffic light has only one color, yellow. It is my preference to stay out of Think It Over Iowa and instead to seek out and sell to people who can and will act decisively. And it is my conviction that exceptional achievers in selling also avoid spending time in Think It Over Iowa. They literally blow those indecisive prospects off and move on. You see, there is a time cost in selling. To achieve peak results, you just have to understand, appreciate, and take into consideration that cost. Now, obviously, different sales professionals have different time cost factors, and differences in sizes of industries or territories, numbers of prospects— these things will have impact on how tough you can be. But generally speaking, time invested in nursing stalling, stumbling, recalcitrant think-it-overs along is not nearly as productive as time spent rushing on to the next prospect. Now here's the loop. Closing has a great deal to do with being in front of a prospect who can be closed and is ready to be closed, and that has everything to do with how the appointment with the prospect is obtained in the first place. Positioning, not prospecting. Magnetic attraction, that pushy pursuit. You can't separate the close from the entire process. When you do, it does become awkward, difficult, and anxiety-inducing for sales pro and prospect alike. Instead, the close should be natural. How it starts will largely control how it ends.

Can you give me an actual example of salespeople, as you put it, wimping out?

Oh, absolutely. Several years ago, to give you one, preparing a seminar for a client of mine in the retirement community business with retirement parks throughout Florida, I went around to a dozen of their locations with a nice little old lady on my arm, she impersonating my aunt, me impersonating a potential buyer, and we took the tour with the sales representatives. We played along. We gave buying signals. I tried to make it as easy as possible for the reps to close us. Now, this company even has a $100 refundable deposit program as the last resort, the step down for the reps, for the customer to reserve a specific lot for 15 days to determine whether or not they want to go farther. Only one of all these reps made any attempt to close a sale. None used the $100 program. Now, they all did a great job on the tour. Then they went wimpy when we got back to the office. They asked softball questions like, "How did you like everything?" or "Well, what do you think?" And they accepted my very first stall without question. And if they described themselves to anybody as sales professionals, they lie. They're tour guides. It turned out that most of the reps weren't even aware of how wimpy they were until I called them on it. In the seminar. That's why you have to monitor yourself very carefully. Are you accepting stalls and excuses too easily? Are you afraid to push for a definite yes or no? Are you really closing?

Well, what do you do to teach most salespeople about closing techniques?

I maintain there's only one closing technique any salesperson needs to You know, it's the best, so why rely on anything other than the best? If you were holding my loved ones hostage and told me I had to close my next sale or you'd kill them, this is the closing strategy I'd use. If I could only use one closing strategy for the rest of my life, this is the one I'd choose. It's the Yes or Yes Close, sometimes called the Alternative Choice Close or the A/B Option Close. Whatever you call it, it simply means that you avoid the entire issue of yes or no altogether. I cut my teeth in selling on this close. In prospecting, would Tuesday morning or Thursday morning work better for you? In selling to consumers, would you prefer to pay by check or credit card? In selling to store owners, which free gift would you prefer with your new rack, A or B? Nobody's ever shown me a good reason to switch switch to a different closing strategy. What about slumps? In the past year, I've had the pleasure of appearing as a speaker in several cities with Lou Holtz, the coach at Notre Dame. In my humble opinion, one of the very best, most intense, focused, exciting coaches in all of college football. If you only see Lou on the sidelines on TV, you might not know he has a terrific sense of humor, and he is a very funny speaker. About his status at Notre Dame, Lou says I have a lifetime contract. That means that I can't be fired during the third quarter if we're ahead and moving the ball. I think it was Jim Valvano who wrote a book titled They Gave Me a Lifetime Contract Then Pronounced Me Legally Dead. As sales pros, we're in the same boat. We're only as good and secure as our last victory. We can't afford and our superiors won't tolerate slumps for very long. In my case, every time. Time I step to the stage to speak and to sell, I gotta get great results. I cannot have an off day. I can't have a headache, a stomachache, an emotional problem. I've gotta score. This is what makes slumps so deadly. At even the hint of a slump, the typical sales pro experiences stark, desperate terror. Unchecked, it'll magnify. It takes on a life of its own. It takes control. The salesperson's fear of failure becomes real. The trick is to cut this thing off quick, fast, immediately. Never let it grow and gain power. Personally, I take a whole array of steps. I get out of the whole environment temporarily. Go see an action movie, watch a game, go to the zoo, get a massage. I relax for a day. I look at the situation where I have not gotten the results I think I should have, try to learn something from it and compare it to lots of other successful situations. I review my overall performance, recent successes, and reassure myself that my methods can be trusted. I go back through my sales presentation piece by piece, step by step, practice it perfectly all over again, and then I try and set myself up for a success. It's very important to have a set of fundamentals, a system, a million-dollar sales presentation that is ingrained second nature to you and that you have a lot of confidence in. It's a mistake to start fooling around changing this, that, and the other thing. A golfer will tell you if he has a slump and starts doing that, you know, one guy says, hey, try changing your grip this way, and another guy says, well, maybe if you bent your knees differently. Before long, he's lost all the basics of his game. It is completely lost. If you have a tested proven presentation, you gotta stick with it. Most salespeople can prevent slumps by making sure that they have a steady stream of well-qualified prospects. That's what my magnetic marketing systems provide and why it is so important to learn how to replace old-fashioned prospecting with magnetic marketing.

Is there any one single mistake that hurts salespeople more than any other?

The biggest mistake all marketers and salespeople insist on making over and over again is talking in terms other than benefits. They want to talk about their company. A guy asked me, "Wouldn't you be interested in knowing why John Hancock is the number one rated company in these funds?" "Well, no," I said, "I wouldn't. I could care less. I mean, hey, I'm sure that's great for John Hancock. They got a plaque or a statue or something." But to me, it's one big fat so what, unless you somehow translate that into a compelling benefit for me. And you need to critically analyze every statement you make. Is this promising an exciting, meaningful benefit? It's old, but you can think of everybody tuned to one radio station and one radio station only, WII FM. What's in it for me? And if you aren't answering that question with every word, every phrase, every breath, you better have a darn good reason why. Paul Meyer, Success Motivation Institute, tells a story of the commuter railroad officials disturbed because passengers wouldn't close the doors and the winter weather made everybody uncomfortable. So they put up a bunch of signs: For the comfort of the other passengers, please close the doors. And they made no difference. Finally, one smart guy changed all the signs to read, "For your comfort, close the doors." Now the doors got closed. Now you've got to totally buy that message and think about it every time you write a letter or an ad or give a sales presentation.

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