SELL AND GROW RICH Achieve Unlimited Success in Selling by Robert Stuberg SMASHWORDS EDITION * * * * * PUBLISHED BY: Success Systems International, LLC Copyright © MCMXCVI - MMXIII Robert C. Stuberg All rights reserved. Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form, with the exception of quotes used in reviews. Your support and respect for this intellectual property is appreciated. Other books and products by Robert Stuberg are available at his personal website: http://www.Stuberg.com Or from his publishing company’s website: http://www.Success.bz Here is a link to a FREE AUDIO PROGRAM by Robert Stuberg: http://www.Success.bz/products/5562/ ***** Also by Robert Stuberg BOOKS & AUDIOS The 12 Life Secrets Your Ultimate Answers to Getting What You Want The 12 Wealth Secrets How to Be Financially Free Forever Creating Your Ultimate Destiny The Secrets to Living an Extraordinary Life Discovering Your Life's Purpose How to Finally Find Your Personal Mission in Life How to Be a World-Class Coach Lead Any Team to Success Success Coaching The Best-Kept Secret of the Super-Rich Time Mastery The CPR Time System Life Secrets for Success Everything You Need to Know to Get Everything You Want Creating Internet Wealth The Secrets to Building Your Fortune Online SOFTWARE LifeOrganizer Stay Focused on What’s Most Important in Your Life MUSIC Provocative Destiny Music That Will Change Your Life ***** TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface CHAPTER ONE: Personal Development for Success CHAPTER TWO: Planning for Success CHAPTER THREE: Engaging the Customer for Success CHAPTER FOUR: Getting the Order CHAPTER FIVE: Review FREE Resources About the Author ***** Preface Selling is the world’s highest paid profession. Unfortunately, there are millions of salespeople that don’t make much money. How can that be? It’s simple really. Here are the two steps for failing in the world of sales: 1. Don’t learn the rules of selling. 2. Don’t practice the rules of selling. All you have to do to guarantee your failure is to implement those two ideas. They will work every time without exception. Conversely, being successful in the world of selling just requires turning those two simple ideas around so it reads like this: 1. Learn the rules of selling. 2. Practice the rules of selling. While this may seem like an oversimplification, I can promise you that it’s not. Becoming successful at anything requires that you learn and apply the fundamentals. And what’s interesting to observe is how the top people in any field can always be found practicing the fundamentals. The purpose of this small book is to provide you with the fundamentals for selling. If you learn them and apply them, your success at selling is guaranteed. We live in a world that operates based on laws and not on luck. In fact, I like to remind myself often that luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. The truth is that we each create our own luck with our own thoughts and actions. Becoming a great salesperson can be broken down into four major parts. First, is the most important part that I call personal development. While most people in the world are pursuing success, the reality is that pursuing success only leads to stress and frustration. Do your own analysis and see if you don’t come to the same conclusion. Most people are chasing after success with the result being that the only thing they catch is anxiety. It’s much better to learn how to attract success based on becoming more as a person. In order to open the windows and doors of opportunity, you need is grow as a person. There is simply nothing more important than your ongoing personal development. It is by becoming more as a person that you attract more into your life. People often have this urgent cry to have more without realizing that the secret is to first become more. The next part is developing a plan for what you want to accomplish. We all need goals that are realistic, compatible, and attainable to keep us growing. What are your goals? What would you like to accomplish? And why do you want whatever is on your list of objectives? If you know what you want and why you want it, you are well on your way … especially if you have your goals written down! After your plan, the next step is to learn exactly how to engage customers. You need to learn how to work with and through people if you want to succeed at selling. You need to know how to select the right potential clients and then how to present your products or services. It’s not that difficult but it does require a strategy. Remember, selling like life is a contact sport. You need to be able to communicate effectively with other people. This might first appear to be a scary proposition because people can reject you; however, each rejection is a step closer to a sale. You have to remember what you knew as a child. When someone said no, that didn’t mean you couldn’t change their mind. Just watch the next time to hear a parent tell a child no and see if the child immediately gives up or ends up with the candy. Persistence always wins in the long term. This brings us to the last major part of selling which is getting the order or closing the deal. There is a huge different between being a great presenter and being a great salesperson. The presenter might entertain but it’s the salesperson that gets the order. In ancient times if you were a great speaker you would be called an orator. It was said of one such man, Cicero, that he was a brilliant orator and people loved to listen to him. But there was another man who was also admired as a speaker but for a different reason. Demosthenes wasn’t just a great speaker or presenter, he was a great persuader. While people might be awed by Cicero and say, “What great speech!” When Demosthenes spoke they would say, “Let us march!” The key is to get people to take action. Even Cicero said of Demosthenes, “he stands alone among all orators.” That’s high praise coming from a colleague. Cicero knew that if something required people to take action, the best man for the job was Demosthenes. So commit to not just being a great presenter, but to being a great persuader. Learn to move people to action. Now it’s time to take action. I recommend not just reading this book but also getting a coach to work with you. All of us need a coach. We are too close to ourselves to really see what’s going on. At best, we can only see a reflection of ourselves in the mirror. A coach can give you a full view and an outside perspective that will really help you to grow. So if you don’t have a coach yet or if you aren’t making the progress you would like to make and are capable of making with your current coach, sign up for a coaching session with us. There’s no cost or obligation to try out our system. Here is the link to that FREE personal coaching session as well as some other FREE resources: FREE personal coaching session: http://www.success.bz/coaching/ Other FREE products and services: http://www.success.bz/sign_up/ ***** Chapter One PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR SUCCESS I’m going to tell you how you can achieve unlimited success in selling along with the unlimited rewards of wealth and satisfaction that go with that success. No other profession offers greater opportunities for individual achievement, wealth accumulation and personal satisfaction than a career in sales. Competent, effective sales people are always in demand and will readily command not only the financial rewards that are due them, but also the recognition and prestige that come as a matter of course to people at the top of their profession. I don’t believe there is such a person as a “natural-born salesman” as the saying used to go. Just as in any profession, top sales people get to where they are as result of study, hard work, experience, and study. And I emphasize the word “study” lest there be any lingering doubts that one of the important components of successful selling is the diligent and continuing acquisition of a large body of knowledge about your product, your industry, your customers and your competitors, not to mention about yourself. Unfortunately, the classic stereotype of a good salesperson—perhaps “caricature” is a better word—is that of a fast-talking, glib manipulator who relies mostly on pressure to get a prospect to say “yes.” I think you know the type: Slick, short on facts and long on hype and lots of now-is-your-last-chance deadlines. Regrettably, that stereotype still persists as a role model in sales for a lot of people. What we will do in this message is step back from stereotypes, and back away from all selling “techniques” for that matter, and discuss what kind of person you first must become to achieve true success in selling and what you must do to become that person. And by the time we complete this program, I expect you to believe, as I do, that you can become anything you want to be if you want it long enough and hard enough and are willing to work for it. If you’re the kind of person that sets limits on yourself, of course, those limits will hold you back. If you’re the kind of person who is willing to change, who wants to succeed and will work for it, the future is anything you want it to be. The only limits on your future are the limits you set on yourself. I’m willing to bet on the simple fact that because you are taking time to listen to this program you are the kind of person who will invest in yourself whatever it takes to achieve success in your selling career. Success in selling ultimately depends on your making a commitment to excellence in every part of your life. I’ll also add that your ultimate happiness in life depends on that commitment to excellence. So what I’m saying is that nothing is more important to success in selling than the continuing pursuit of personal development throughout your career. What talents you start with in life aren’t nearly as important as what you do with the development of those talents. We are all given different talents in the same way we’re dealt different hands in cards. It’s what you do with what you’re dealt that makes the difference. After all, fortunes have been founded on hands that held little more than a pair of deuces. Keep in mind that the market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance. To earn more, you must continue to develop the levels and quality of performance that justify those greater rewards. Someone has said, “You are earning exactly today what you’re worth today” which is a way of saying we are worth the sum total of all the choices and decisions we have made in life up to this point. And if we’re not happy with what we have at this moment, then we darn well have to get busy and make the right choices and decisions that will make us better, more effective and move us forward to the level that justifies the rewards we think we ought to have. The truth is, at every stage in life, we must keep getting better, growing, expanding our talents to keep from falling back. Our happiness depends on it. We’re only happy when we’re moving forward, moving toward something important that we really want. OK, what’s the most important goal in your sales career? I’ll tell you what it is. As of right now, your goal is to be in the top 10% of your group, your company or your industry, whatever your situation may be. It doesn’t matter what your standing is at the moment, because you’re not looking back, only forward. From this moment on your objective is to become the best, only the best. Keep in mind, though, the greater the prize, the steeper the price. Nowhere else is the old adage, “You get what you pay for” truer than in what you’re willing to invest in personal development to become the best in your field. And the real price is measured not so much in money as in what you’re willing to commit in time, effort, discipline and perseverance to achieve your goals. This is an investment in the truest sense. Nothing will give you a greater total return than investing in your personal growth to achieve your goals. It’s the only “sure thing” investment you’ll ever get. The people who never make the top 10% are those who aren’t willing to make that investment because they aren’t willing to make the personal sacrifices it requires. They aren’t willing to make the tough choices that the discipline of personal growth demands. But you know, every journey begins with a first step, and then another and another. And personal development is simply a matter of getting better one step at a time. Setting goals and moving toward them. As someone once said, “By the yard it’s hard; by the inch it’s a cinch.” It really is that simple. So start your journey now by taking the first step of making the commitment to a concerted effort of personal growth. There are 12 important characteristics that define successful sales people and I want you to use these characteristics as targets for your personal development. In all instances, personality and personal traits of character are more important to success than even the important factors of product knowledge, sales skills and the product itself. Selling is a people business, the productive interaction of people in achieving a mutually beneficial exchange of value. The top 10% of sales people are those who bring the highest quality personal attributes to that interaction. The first of these essential personal attributes is a high level of self-confidence and self- esteem. The two concepts are inseparable. Your self-confidence depends on your self- esteem or how much you like yourself. And there’s a direct positive correlation between how much you like yourself and how well you do everything else. It’s simply a case of “You become what you think about.” The higher your self-esteem, the lower your fear of rejection. The more you like yourself, the more effective you are in getting along with others. The result is that people have more confidence in you when they feel you like them and care about them. One of the best ways of building self-esteem is backing your sales effort with the second important personal attribute, and that’s the will power of commitment and perseverance. The primary reason for sales failure is people don’t stick with it long enough and hard enough to get the winning experience to maintain their self-esteem. They’re willing to take “no” for an answer. They accept rejection as a personal affront. Selling, like so many other avenues of life, is a business of percentages. Successful sales people know that success is directly related to the number of calls they make and that 80% of sales are made after the fifth visit to a prospect. It’s terribly important that you make an absolute commitment to succeed in your sales career. This is a 100%, no compromises, take no prisoners dedication to become the best in your field. You’ve made an iron-clad contract with yourself. And you see, once you’ve done that, failure is not an option. There is no room for excuses, distractions or half-way measures. All at once, you have set in motion the forces that will move you forward. You will see the positive steps ahead, the path you have to take to get you to the top. This path naturally has its roadblocks and potholes. People who don’t succeed, people who haven’t made that commitment, will let these obstacles discourage and defeat them. Perseverance is the natural counterpart of your commitment to succeed. Success means you keep trying. You never, ever give up. Remember, there is no traffic jam on the second mile. Or the third, or the fourth. Success in selling is a chain reaction as success breeds success. Successful sales people are successful because they like themselves, they like selling and they have decided to become successful at it and won’t stop until they are. The next important attribute successful people have is a positive self-concept. It’s not only that they like themselves, but it’s the total picture they have of themselves. First, they think that success is the natural consequence of the commitment they’ve made to be successful. If the concept is unfamiliar, you may first have to practice what actors call the “suspension of disbelief”, but with time, you can adopt that same mindset of success. Again, you become what you think about. Project yourself into the realm of success you want to achieve as a means of achieving it. Customers will accept your image of yourself, so act the part you want to be, that is, act in every way like a top sales professional. Cary Grant—his real name was Archie Leach —worked hard and spent years creating the persona of “Cary Grant.” And once when an admirer said, “I’d give anything to be Cary Grant,” Cary Grant said, “So would I.” You are what you think about. How you see yourself determines your behavior and your success. When successful sales people see themselves in a role that’s helpful to customers, this is what the customer also sees. For example, position yourself mentally as a successful consultant to your customers, someone who is on call as a problem solver and advisor. You no longer are just a purveyor of goods & services, but a highly paid specialist to help them increase their sales & profits. Another useful self-concept is to be a “doctor of selling.” You see your customers as patients with complaints and you’ve been called in for consultation. Your posture is highly professional and with a highly ethical approach you proceed to make an examination, diagnose the problem and provide a prescription for a cure. You do make house calls and insist on follow-up visits. These concepts are not mutually exclusive, because at the same time, successful sales people always see themselves as president & CEO of their own companies. In that sense, they see themselves as self-employed and totally responsible for their own bottom line, the success of their venture. They know that they determine their own income and what the future holds for them. Your self-concept is the basis of your customers’ confidence in you and what you can do for them. Adopt the mindset of the person you want your customers to see. The next important attribute for success is the ability to set goals and pursue them. Every successful sales person is goal- oriented, beginning with the goal of being successful. Goals first of all are motivators, the spur to keep us moving forward, as well as the reward for achievement. Goals must be concrete and achievable, even if at first they seem a bit beyond your reach. Goals don’t necessarily have to be grand and may be quite finite as stepping stones to a grander objective. Goals are a marvelous tool for organizing your time effectively. Develop the nightly practice of setting goals for what you plan to accomplish the next day. Prioritize these goals and go after your tasks in that order. You can use the same technique for longer time periods as well. The great things about setting goals and the plans to accomplish them is how they tend to protect you from the irrelevant and time-wasting distractions that otherwise can bog you down. Once you get in the habit of goal setting it will become an important way of life that you won’t be without. One example of goal-setting you’ll want to do is your annual income. Once you decide on what that figure should be, break it down into a monthly, weekly, daily and finally, an hourly rate. If, for illustration purposes, that hourly rate is $50/hour, then you will only do $50/hour tasks and will say no to activities not worth your time and plan your days accordingly. The key to effective goal-setting, of course, is writing them down and reviewing them frequently. Go over them every day, if needed, to keep you on course and on your time table. Be ready to make adjustments in your plans as necessary to keep you moving toward your goal. Set your goals and plans in the way the French philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin, intended when he wrote, “Our duty as men (and women) is to proceed as if limits to our ability do not exist. We are collaborators in creation.” Be a goal-setter. Be a collaborator in creation. But it takes courage to set goals and follow through on them and courage is the next important attribute of success. Probably the greatest single deterrent people experience in achieving success is fear. It is fear of many things, but primarily it is fear of the consequences of acting. It is the fear of failure. Some think of courage as taking action without fear, but as Mark Twain said, “Courage is resistance to fear, master of fear; not absence of fear.” Or, as we recall, Ernest Hemingway described courage as “grace under pressure.” The soldier’s badge of courage in battle is pressing forward in the face of overwhelming fear. While the fears we encounter in our careers seldom concern physical safety, the consequences can be almost as debilitating if such fears aren’t faced squarely, challenged and managed. In the simplest sense, courage is managing your fears and acting to overcome them. You must have courage to take action on your goals, plans and values for as Winston Churchill said, “Courage is the foremost of virtues. For upon it all others depend.” Think of courage, then, as a foundation for everything we do. Courage frequently simply amounts to doing something to reach your goal that you intensely don’t want to do. But in all cases, do it you must, if you are to succeed. Courage is an absolute requisite to the next important attribute of success, the essential quality of personal integrity. Of all human traits, it is the hardest won and the most difficult to sustain. Little wonder that it’s the personal characteristic that people value above all else. My dictionary defines integrity as, “Moral soundness as it is revealed in dealings that test steadfastness to truth, purpose, responsibility or trust.” And the synonyms listed are honor and honesty. Note the important emphasis on “dealings that test steadfastness to truth, etc.” The point, I think, is that we are constantly tested and the measure of our integrity is how well we stand up to those tests. How our integrity relies on courage was suggested by the noted author and columnist, Walter Lippman, when he wrote, “(A person) has honor if he (or she) holds himself to an ideal of conduct—though it is inconvenient, unprofitable or dangerous to do so.” Think of your personal integrity in terms of that ideal of conduct that takes courage to maintain and defend. I consider personal integrity the magnetic north on our moral compass. It’s a constant [...]... want to be if you want it long enough and hard enough and are willing to work for it ***** Chapter Two PLANNING FOR SUCCESS The next most important step to success in your selling career is the planning you do before you make your first call In today’s economy, products and markets both have grown more extensive, diverse and sophisticated and the challenges of selling in this environment have increased... broadly and specifically, to increase your sales knowledge and effectiveness Those who do not keep expanding their knowledge will be surpassed by those who do Read at least 30 minutes every day and build a library of books on selling (You’ll be surprised how many there are.) Listen to audio programs, especially in your car between calls Subscribe to professional and industry journals, attend seminars, and. .. ideals of conduct you hold yourself to and how you stand up to the tests of steadfastness to truth, purpose, responsibility and trust, not to mention honor and honesty And most of all, be honest with yourself Make your name and reputation synonymous with integrity The next important personal attribute of successful sales people is enthusiasm I like the definition of selling that says a sale is a transfer... preparation for selling against your competitor’s weak spots 7 Your preparation and skill in answering the customer’s objections and concerns 8 Your skill at establishing rapport, credibility and trust and making a good impression on the customer How do you rate your personality? 9 How good are you at closing and getting the customer’s commitment? 10 How good is your commitment to follow-up and exceeding... prove invaluable to you in the years ahead Please keep this chapter and your notes from it in a place where it will be convenient for you to return to them and review them frequently ***** Chapter Three ENGAGING THE CUSTOMER FOR SUCCESS Growth of the internet and e-commerce business notwithstanding, the selling of most of the goods and services consumed around the world still depends on humans talking... will reduce costs, turnover and risk, or increase profits, satisfaction and security and at the same time pay for itself These are the quantitative answers to the question, “What’s in it for me?” It’s helpful, I think, to appreciate very early in your selling career that selling is a mental process, a matter of mind over matter It involves applying your intellect, knowledge and experience, as well as... problems You must have polished communication skills, including the ability to influence and persuade others and to know when to negotiate and compromise One expert suggests that selling is 80% psychological and 20% technical As always, knowledge is your stock in trade Your success will depend on your ability to assemble and integrate a greater amount of knowledge than your competitors Of course you have... goals and convincing the customer that you can help him achieve his goals Another important strategic element in selling success is the continuing professional selfassessment of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it This is the process of regularly stepping back and rating yourself and making changes for improvement where it’s needed You can do this by preparing a list of the important factors in selling... like yourself and your enthusiasm That self- esteem is reflected in the confidence and intensity of your presentations to your customers And similarly, your enthusiasm will largely be a reflection of how much you like what you’re doing and how comfortable you are doing it Enthusiasm also is a reflection of the goals you set and the intensity of your desire to achieve those goals Enthusiasm grows out of... with multiple presentations And then, because of the proliferation of products in many markets, you can expect more competition And lastly, you can expect competition to be aggressive and tough Facing and understanding such challenges in the market is the starting point Strategic planning is the key to turning them into opportunities This includes the things you must know and the preliminary steps you . SELL AND GROW RICH Achieve Unlimited Success in Selling by Robert Stuberg SMASHWORDS EDITION * * * *. the discipline of personal growth demands. But you know, every journey begins with a first step, and then another and another. And personal development