Sell Millions!

Sell Millions

by author Bill Russo,

 former partner in a firm that sold jewelry cleaner products

 in one of the largest 'Warehouse Club' discount chains in the United States

One of the easiest ways in this world to make lots of money is by selling things.  When some people say that selling is hard, they are forgetting that everybody, every single day wants to buy something.

If you are selling the exact thing that a person wants, you have a guaranteed sale.  But what if you are selling something that somebody says they do not want?  

Thousands of salesmen in the U.S. make over a million dollars per year!

In this case, you have two choices. One – go on to the next potential customer. Two – convince the person that they do need and want your product.  How to do that is the subject of this article. 

First, a bit of background: my business partner and I had a cleaning product that did a wonderful job on jewelry, mirrors, glass, and eyeglasses.  We developed a product demonstration that was highly successful at fairs and flea markets. 

Bill Russo selling the famous eyeglass cleaner at a demonstration on Cape Cod in 2013

We demonstrated the product to an executive of one of the nation’s leading wholesale clubs, and he was so impressed with it that he green-lighted us to sell our product in the company’s stores. 

We had a specific product and it was a good one, but the techniques we used to market our bottles of cleaning solution, can be applied to any product or service.  Once you learn the tips and techniques of selling you can use them to move houses, mountains, ball-point pens, vacuum cleaners, cars, and anything else you can name.

Before we get into details let’s cover a topic that scares all budding sales people – failure.  You will not sell everyone every time. No matter how great you are, you will lose some sales.  Think of selling like a baseball player going up to the plate to hit.  If a ballplayer fails seven out of every ten times, he hits .300 and is a Super Star.  Think of it.  He makes an out most of the time but is considered an outstanding player.

In the major leagues, if a batter fails seven times out of every ten at bats, he's called a Super Star and is paid 10 or 12 million dollars  a year. 

In selling, you’ll go up to the plate and you too will make an out many times, but you will also have some hits.  The more you practice and the more you implement the tips that you are going to read, the higher your batting average will be.  Keep at it and you can become a Super Star salesman.

First tip. Try to think of your ‘sales pitch’ as a conversation with another person.  Arm yourself with facts.  Know your product and describe it to the customer.  Get the customer involved as if it were simply a regular chat between two people.

If you’re selling a long lasting ball point pen, ask the person “have you ever had a pen run out of ink right in the middle of an important letter?”  There’s a good chance you will get a response to the query, but have a backup remark ready if he or she doesn’t reply.

Bounce back with something like, “Well my wife was thrilled when I took this job and gave her some of our pens, because she loves to do crosswords and she always does them in pen.  Seems like every week she used to complain that her pen ran out of ink right in the middle of the puzzle. Now ‘wifey’ is happy, so I’m happy.  You know how that works!”

Imagine how sad we'd be if John Lennon's Pen ran out of ink before he finished 'Imagine'.

Remember that prospects are people and need to be accepted for what they are and not what you would like them to be. Impatience on the part of a sales rep has killed far more sales than even a bad product.  You need to be understanding when a customer is slow to comprehend a point or make a decision.

Try being sympathetic with some genuine concern like, “I know it’s perhaps a hard decision, but most everyone who has bought this product likes it so much they buy it again and again.”

Understanding your product and making a productive presentation to your prospects will take less time when you know your batting (selling) average and care and understand the people you are calling on.

All of us are salesmen every day of our lives, even if we don’t know it. You sell yourself as a friend, neighbor, prospective spouse, member of a team – and we move, or stand still, based on our selling efforts.  

There is no such thing as the born salesman.  All salespeople start at the same point – with a zero batting average.  No matter how bad a sales rep is, he or she will make a certain number of sales.  The sales reps who actually study and analyse the psychology of the ‘game’ are the ones with the highest batting averages.

It is really true that anyone can sell anything to anybody!  That said, some things are easier to sell than others.  When my business partner and I took a woman’s diamond ring and soaked it for a few seconds in our cleaning solution, it came out so sparklingly beautiful, that the product sold itself. It was the same thing with glasses.  We used to clean people’s eyeglasses for free.  Looking through their old glasses after we cleaned them, made people think their lenses were new again and most of the time, we made a sale.

But no matter what you’re selling.  No matter how bad of a salesman you are.  No matter how poorly you give your presentation – if you go to bat enough times, you will get a hit.  In the beginning your batting average is not going to match that of an all-star, but the more pitches you make, the more sales you will close.

The real problem for many new reps is they are simply not making enough calls. They are not getting their product seen by, read by, or tried by a sufficient number of prospects. 

I can help.  Keep reading.

We are all salesmen.  When you are a fork lift driver trying to move up to a warehouse manager, or a waitress to hostess, salesman to sales manager or from mail order dealer to president of the biggest sales company in the world – the most important thing is to continue learning. 

To be in the top tier of sales people you must: Get up in the morning.  Do what you have to do to sell more product - keep good records - update your selling materials, and plan which direction your direct selling should take. Besides this you need to increase your knowledge of your product.  You need a fistful of success stories to unfurl before prospects.  You need to be able to tell them about a guy across town who used your product and now says it’s the best thing since Microwave Popcorn.

Oh by the way.  There’s money to be made in sales.  In fact the selling profession is the highest paid occupation in the world.  Browse the list of billionaire salesmen employed on Wall Street in New York city, for one example of high paid sales reps.  Yes a stock salesman is the same as a door to door salesman of vacuum cleaners.  They both sell. The difference is in the money they make.

I said the highest paying profession is that of Sales, and I'm sticking with that, and yet the highest paid salary workers make about $270,000 per year.  What business is it that pays its workers that much?  It's the medical industry.  Anesthesiologists are at the top of the pay scale for doctors and they earn more than a quarter million per year.  But what makes  the sales profession so different is that earnings are often tied to  sales figures, so a salesman really does have the potential to make far more than the salary earned by the medical people.

Have pity on the poor doctors.  Four years of college, four years of medical school, long periods of internship and for what?  A lousy 270 K? A salesman, even one with no high school diploma, has a chance to earn a million dollars or more every year. 

Okay, okay.  We’ll get down to the basics in a moment, but first I have to make sure you are sold on selling.  It is a challenge.  It makes big demands on your creativity and your thought patterns. 

Here’s the bottom line.  Every week in this nation, ‘selling’ makes somebody a millionaire.  Many of these people were virtually without a penny and could not get a ‘regular’ job when they began their selling careers.  And yet an amazing number of these folks became rich.  They did it.  You can too.  

Mary Kay Ash was one of the most successful saleswomen in history.  She parlayed her talents into a sales company that did billions of dollars worth of business and was famous for giving Pink Cadillacs to her top sales reps.

One of the best ways to get rich selling is to come up with an unusual product.  My partner took some common ingredients and produced a highly effective cleaning product for jewelry and eyeglasses. 

You may have some special talent for crafts that will allow you to develop a product that could be sold at fairs or directly to businesses.  One man I know developed a cleaning solution for dulled headlights on cars.  His product removes the glaze that seems to form on so many cars these days.  He demonstrates the product at a flea market in Florida and makes piles of money both from cleaning customers’ headlights and selling the product in bottles.

Dale Carnegie (the guy they named a hall after) is another of thousands of salesmen who used selling to rise from poverty and become a billionaire.  He started selling during his high school years.  After graduation he worked for the Armour company vending beef and bacon and such.  He made his Omaha territory the top district in the entire company practically before he was old enough to vote. 

You don’t have to have your own product.  Check the want ads on Craigslist or in the newspaper.  There are tons of selling jobs out there.  Most people will fail and there are always opportunities. 

If you follow the tips coming up, you will not be one of those who failed but one of the reps with a high batting average and a good income. 

 So here now is the plan I call

S-I-S, Success in Selling

1.     Hand out.  If the product you are selling can be handled, get it into the customer’s hand. When they hold it, they heft it, they look at the label, and they generally will buy it.  After I retired from my ‘regular’ job, I became a product demonstrator.  One of my products was chicken sausage, which was fairly new at the time.  I had a few steaming pots of samples for the customers and people loved the taste, but they rarely expressed the intention to purchase until I put a one pound package of the product in their hands.  Invariably the sausage went from their hands into their shopping cart.  I loved that job because I got paid an hourly wage and a one dollar bonus for each package I sold over 30.  I could usually sell the thirty in an hour or two and then another 30 above and beyond my quota.  

Doing in-store demonstrations is not just a great retirement job but it's also excellent sales training.  Don't ask the customer if they want to try the product....put it in their hands.  That's the way to make a demo the talk of the store. 

2.     Face time!  Don’t stand beside the customer.  Face the prospect.  Watch his or her face.  Try to read the expressions on their faces.  You’ll know when you are on the right track.  When you get smiles and head nods, you are almost ready to clinch the sale.  Keep making statements that ask for a ‘yes’ answer.  You want to get the customer used to saying ‘yes’ to you so that when you finally get ready to close and say, ‘wouldn’t two or three of these look great in your fridge tonight’, the customer will follow suit and say ‘yes’

3.     Get engaged! With customers who don’t respond to you, you can’t get any feedback.  You need to dramatize your pitch to get them involved.  “You’ve seen how great this product cleaned your glasses wouldn’t it be good to always be able to see this clearly?”  After you ask, stop talking for a few seconds and wait for an answer.  Keep waiting.  He or she will begin to fidget.  It’s a fact that the one who speaks first will lose. Don’t say anything.  Just keep looking at the prospect, with a calm look on your face.  He will give in and you will be on the way to the sale.  Wait it out!  Don’t give in and you will win. 

4.     You are not going to believe this tip!  But try it out, it does work. Prospects who are sales people themselves, and customers who think they know a lot about selling can be difficult to sell, especially for a rookie sales rep.  But these people can be the easiest of all to sell. Simply give your sales pitch, and instead of trying for a close, toss out a challenge such as, "I don't know sir - after watching the way you react to what I've been showing and telling you about my eyeglass and jewelry cleaner (or whatever you are selling), I'm not sure that this product is really going to be beneficial to you.” Then wait a few seconds, just looking at him and waiting for him.  to say something.  Then, start packing up your sales demo as if you are finished with him and going to move on.  In nearly every case, the ‘wise guy’ will quickly ask you ‘why?’ I can’t explain it to you, but these people won’t let you get away without selling something to them.  It’s as if they just have to prove you wrong.  The more doubtful you are that your product will work for them, the more they will demand you sell to them.  Until you try this technique and see that it works, you are not going to believe in it.

5.     Know when to fold ‘em.  Just like in poker you have to know when to hold your cards and when to fold ‘em.  If the guy in the above example is one of the rare ones that does not buy, that’s fine.  Just move on to the next customer. In selling your time is your time and time is money.  You should given each customer a certain time limit.  If you’re selling a product that retails for just a few dollars, it makes no sense pitching a guy for more than a few minutes. If he or she does not buy, simply thank them politely for listening and move on.   The prospect who asks you to call back in a week or so, or wants to ramble on about similar products, prices or previous experiences, is wasting your time/money.  Learn to get your prospect interested, and wanting your product, and then present your sales pitch and close the sale.

To sum up.  Selling is like baseball.  The more times you go to the plate, the more hits you will get.  If you continue to study and practice the techniques listed above, the higher your batting average will be.

Don’t be afraid of no.  You cannot sell everyone.  Move on to the next and the next and the next.  The more calls you make, the more sales you will make. 

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Bill Russo is a retired broadcaster and journalist with a number of books on all major sites including Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Apple and more. 

In retirement he did in store demonstrations for Aidell Sausage Company and others.  He was a partner in a company that sold Jewelry Polish and Eyeglass Cleaner in one of the larges 'Wholesale Clubs' in America. 

His book Ghosts of Cape Cod is a three time Number One Best Seller

 among Cape Cod books on Amazon Kindle https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-Cape-Cod-Bill-Russo-ebook/dp/B01BL1TP7U