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.
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.
-0-
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
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