Closing the sale has always been the most difficult part of selling. Thankfully, Brian Tracy, author of the best-selling “The Psychology of Selling”, wrote another insightful book. In this book, he provides a step-by-step guide on how you can improve your outlook as a salesperson, and apply some of the most effective closing techniques today.
CHAPTER 1: DEVELOPING A POWERFUL SALES PERSONALITY
Becoming excellent in closing sales begins within you. In sales, your personality is more important than your product knowledge, sales skills and product/service that you are selling.
In fact, your personality determines fully 80% of your sales success.
Top salespeople have high levels of self-confidence and self-esteem. Without self-confidence, it is almost impossible to be successful in selling and you will tend to come up with every excuse to avoid talking to prospects or taking any action where there is a possibility for failure or rejection.
There is a 1:1 relationship between being and becoming an excellent person and high levels of self-esteem. The rule is that you can never like or love anyone else more than you like yourself. So don’t expect anyone else to like you more than you like yourself.
How you feel about yourself is the single most important determinant of the quality of all your relationships, both personal and business.
Take Charge of Your Life
The biggest mistake you can make is to ever think that you work for anyone but yourself.
From the time you take your first job until the day you retire, you are self-employed.
You are the president of your own entrepreneurial corporation, selling your services into the marketplace at the highest price possible.
You have only one employee—yourself. Your job is to sell the highest quality and quantity of your services throughout your working life.
So be aggressive about learning and training. Take all the training you can get. and keep on upgrading your knowledge.
Every new skill you learn is an investment in your own future.
Develop Empathy and Understanding
Top salespeople also have high levels of empathy, i.e., they really
care about their customers.
Ambition, the desire to achieve, combined with empathy, the genuine caring for the well-being of
your customers are the twin keys to top sales performance.
The very best way to express and practice empathy with a customer, or with anyone else, is to ask questions and listen intently to the answers. Dominate the listening, rather than the talking.
Be Honest All The Time
Top-selling salespeople are impeccably honest with themselves and with others. There is no substitute for honesty in selling.
When you are completely honest with yourself and you practice the quality of empathy with others, you like yourself more, and your customers will, in turn, like and accept you.
The Magic Questions
There are two great questions that you can use to accelerate your growth toward high income in sales:
What did I do right?
This question keeps you focused on the best parts of your performance. Even if the sales call was a complete failure, there were certain things that you did correctly.
You keep yourself continually focused on the best elements of your sales activities. By reviewing these activities immediately after a sales call, you program them into your subconscious and create a predisposition to repeat these positive behaviors at your next sales call.
What would I do differently?
This question forces you to think about the positive things that you could do to improve your performance in a similar situation. Even if the sales call has been completely successful, there were still things that you could do differently in the future to make it even better.
The advantage of these two questions is that the answers to both of them are positive. Force yourself to review and mentally rehearse the very greatest ingredients of your performance. Then, the next time you are in a similar situation, your subconscious mind will pass them back up to you and make them available to you for the sales call.
The 100 Call Method
For every new sales job, you should make an effort to have 100 calls and face to face interactions as soon as possible. But put the idea of selling aside for the meantime and only focus on speaking to 100 people.
By dedicating yourself to seeing 100 people and listening to their questions and objections, you will learn more about how to sell your product.
Moreover, since you are making no effort to sell, you will make sales almost without effort. Your energy and confidence will increase with each call you make. You become more calm and comfortable towards your customers, and in return, they will feel the same way about you. They will like you and most likely buy from you.
Source: https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/blog/the-art-of-closing-the-sale-book-summary/
