Sales Survival Skills

All right, let's talk about sales survival skills. Sales is such a key to everything you want to do in life. As soon as you decide you want to do something, you got some people around you or something that needs to be done, then you're communicating that. And if it's not their idea, a lot of times they don't think that's really a great thing to do, certainly not right now. And so you're stuck. So you got. If you can, you know, you can lord it over them. If you're a boss, if you're a parent, teacher, a coach, you can yell at them and make them do it. But you don't get their best efforts because you don't get that internal motivation. You don't activate the want to. So how can you activate the want to? The want to is the key to sales. It's the internal motivation. It's not a logical thing. It is an emotional thing. And so how can you understand or how can you make sales work for you? When I started at sales, I thought this was the most complicated thing in the world. I thought I'd have a better chance understanding Russian astrophysics than I would sales. But you find out, no, it's not a complicated thermonuclear equation. It is something very simple. It's just talking to people. And the first thing is, I would say is you got to get people to like you. If you're going to have any kind of successful thing, they've got to feel comfortable with you. Now, how do you get people to like you? See, if they don't like you, they won't like your company, and they certainly won't like your idea, the thing that you're trying to sell to them. So how do you get them to like you? Well, a good way of thinking of it is like this. If you're a car salesman, how do you get people to like a car? You're going to talk about what the car. You're going to talk about, you know, how gorgeous it is and how you know the new car smell, get in it, taste the smell, the feel, experience it, and, you know, get. Give them some numbers and take it out for a test drive. You're going to be talking about that car, focusing on the car. If you want to sell a house, what do you talk about? You talk about the house, the location, the neighborhood, the value. And you're going to be talking to let them know what's involved there. Now, if you want to sell yourself, what do you talk about? You talk about yourself Right? Wrong, Buzz. No, you talk about them. You let them talk about them. The funniest thing is that the more you let them talk about them, the more they like you. And you know, they've never met anybody as impressive as you who is so interested in everything they've got to say. So you want to, if you want people to like you, don't dominate the conversation, showing off, talking about all your big accomplishments or your product and what you, your company and all that. Get to make friends with them, find out who they are, show interest, establish a bond between you. Because just like politicians, if you don't like the politician, you are not going to vote for them. Getting over the like hurdle is the biggest problem salesmen have. And that's why in sales, usually you have more luck working inside your network of family and friends because you by and large pretty much always like them. The other thing is about sales is never say blah, blah, when blah will get the job done. Once you see that they want it, shut up and let them buy it. Don't add one more thing because when you add one more thing, you're going to give them one more reason, one new reason to give you that deal killer. And that is I want to think about it. And what do you say to that? So you want to keep it brief. So how do you keep it brief? Well, let's go and let's talk about the greatest sales histories. One of the all time favorite stories of the greatest sales trainer of all time, at least in that era. His name was Fred Herman. Fred Herman was on the Fred Herman Johnny Carson story. So he tells stories because people remember things with stories. But Fred Herman gets on Johnny Carson show and Johnny said, you're supposed to be the greatest salesman sales trainer in the world, so sell me something. And so Johnny's sitting back ready for a big, big routine. You know, flip charts, PowerPoints, you know, pull out the products, put it on the table and you know, kind of like selling the Ginsu or Gingsu knives, you know. But Herman said, well, would you like me to sell you? Johnny said, I don't know. How about this ashtray? Well, why the ashtray, Johnny? What is it that you like about the ashtray? Asked Herman. Well, Carson listed the things he liked. It matched the brown color of his desk. It was octagonal. It fulfilled the need for someplace to put his ashes. You know, he went on about it. Then Herman asked, well, how much would you be willing to spend for a brown octagonal ashtray like that one? Well, maybe $20. Said, you know, Johnny told him and sold, said Fred. And see, that's as complicated as sales needs to be. It's the ashtray. You notice that he asked questions, which brings us to our next thing. The way you keep things, the way you get people to like you, the way you get to the point the quickest is you ask them questions and let them talk. Now what asking questions allows you to do is find out where they are in their life in relationship to their product or their situation in sales. Sales is simply this. You find someone at point A, you want to get them over to another place. Point B, maybe they're doing something, you want them to do something different. You know, like with the kids, their friends, their after school activities, when they do their homework, all of those people you work with, people you fish with or golf with, maybe you want to try a different course or, you know, whatever it is in life or in business. You're trying to sell something and so you want them to get them out of this product, out of say this car, into that car, out of this product, into that product. And how do you do that? Well, first of all, and the thing is, the C is you see there at point A, you want to get them to point B and you want them to trust you as being the best person to get them from point A to point B. And so how do you get them even interested? You know, it's like food. You put food in front of somebody who's full, they're not going to jump up and run over and dig in. But you take a hungry person and you don't have to ask them twice. So need has got to be there. Now, if people are satisfied or they're acting like they're satisfied, they're going to have, they're going to blow you off. They have no interest in hearing about all this great stuff going over at point B. So the way you dislodge them or you kind of plow the ground up in their mind from that fixed position. You ask questions and what is a person purpose of these questions? You know, you're past the point now of getting to know about them. You got a relationship and you ask questions about their situation. Why to disturb? The purpose of any presentation you give them is to disturb them. You might give them facts about other people, you might say, you know, you get them thinking about other examples of things that have happened to people continuing, staying in this thing, owning this product or whatever. You tell them stories of some people that you've dealt with who were heading down that track and you showed where they, where they wound up. And you get them disturbed. See, if you can't get them disturbed where they don't want to be here, you know, this is a panic situation there. It's only when they don't like being at point A that they start taking an interest in. Tell me about how that thing works again. And see the moment they're satisfied that what they're looking for, that you found out what they'd be most interested in by asking questions. See, in sales you're solving problems. You're solving a problem, you're improving their situation. You're giving them an advantage that others don't have or they wouldn't have. If you can't get them disturbed about where they are, they're not going to be interested in moving over there. So that's a quick intro to sales. It's not a complicated thing. It's simply a matter of getting to know people, finding out how they feel about things. In one example, let me just show you how questions can dislodge people. You go up and talk to someone, let's just say you want to recruit them into your business or something else. And you know, they're totally happy, they're not interested, totally happy. And you say, I appreciate that, I understand that and good for you. But you know, you may have, you know, not everybody's as happy and satisfied as you are. But let me just ask you this. In your wildest dreams, if you take your situation you're so happy with and if you could improve it because nothing's perfect, you could always improve, what would be the one thing about your current situation that you'd like to be a little bit better? If you could take it and make it even better than it is now, what would be the thing that would jump into your mind now? When they answer that, you're starting to let them realize maybe they're not as happy being over here at point A as they thought they were. But they're not getting to that point because you're badgering them and harassing them. You're letting them realize it for themselves. Nothing phony, nothing can drive, nothing manipulative about it. It's just helping them realize where they are. And if there are those kind of things, cause them to take, be a little bit more open minded about something that might improve their situation. That's what sales is all about. That gives you a kind of a head start. In fact, a lot of people in sales been in it for 20 years and don't understand any of that stuff because you see them out there making the number one mistake. We'll close out with this. The number one mistake people make in sales is they think you sell by going, talking about the features, going in there and yakking on and on about features. And my car does this, my company does this, my product does this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Try, you know, where maybe they don't care about any of that stuff. That's logical, you know, that's the logical approach. And people die in sales thinking that sales is like a teeter totter type thing. That if you load one side with enough benefits, eventually the other people, you know, you'll finally get to a point where you, after point 37, they'll say, that's it, I want to buy. No, by that point they're already asleep. This is the go slow, put people to sleep approach and talk at them, rather talk with them and, and let them get to know you and let them tell you what they're interested in. So together, y' all can help them move from their current situation over to where they are. And you can do it as quickly and simply as possible. They're happy with this, and now they're happy with you. That's a quick look, 14 minute look at sales. Good luck.