Selling 101: What Every Successful Sales Professional Needs to Know

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About Selling 101: What Every Successful Sales

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. SELLING 101 What Every Successful Sales Professional Needs to KnowBy Zig Ziglar Nelson BooksCopyright © 2003 The Zig Ziglar Corporation All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7852-6481-1 Contents Is This Book for You?........................................................vii1. You Made the Right Choice.................................................12. Important Skills for Today's Sales Professional...........................93. Finding Someone Willing to Buy............................................164. Dealing Effectively with Call Reluctance..................................265. Sell by Design, Not by Chance.............................................376. Questions Are the Answer-Need Analysis....................................457. Conducting the Comfortable Interview......................................558. Making the Lights Go On-Need Awareness....................................659. Selling to People's Problems-Need Solution................................7210. The ABC's of Closing Sales-Need Satisfaction.............................7811. Closing More Sales More Often............................................8312. Beyond Customer "Service" to Customer "Satisfaction".....................8913. Gaining Control of Your Time and Your Life...............................95About the Author.............................................................102 Chapter One You Made the Right Choice Attitude is always a "player" on your team. Welcome to Selling 101! I would like to begin in a somewhat unusual manner. Let me encourage you to leave the sales profession if you can. Yes, you read it properly. Zig Ziglar is encouraging you to quit selling-if you can. Those last three words are the most important words you can face at this point in your sales career: if you can. Those who get into sales because they might make a little more money or might even help other people are "short-termers." You need to get into selling because your heart and your head won't allow you to do anything else! In sales, you will be treated rudely. People will, on occasion, even slam doors in your face. They will hang up on you for no obvious reason. Some will avoid you at social gatherings. Your family (and even you) will question your sanity. As humorist and speaker Dr. Charles Jarvis says, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you!" Yes, paranoia can be a side effect of the sales profession. Are You In? My good friend Walter Hailey is one of the most successful men in the world. Walter is a salesman par excellence (that means he's gooood!) and a winner who has spent his life helping others win. Despite Walter's success, he had a rocky start in the world of selling. He faced frustration, anxiety, closed doors, low sales, nervous stomach, and virtually every other symptom associated with an individual who is uncertain of how he is going to survive in the sales world. As a matter of fact, his discouragement was so bad, Walter went to his manager and told him he was quitting, getting out of the business. To this his manager responded, "You can't." Walter dogmatically stated again that he was quitting. His manager replied, "Walter, you can't get out of the insurance business because you have never really gotten into the insurance business." Walter said the words hit him like the proverbial "ton of bricks." As he reflected on the truth of what his manager said, he realized for possibly the first time in his life that you cannot get out of something you have never been in. There are many people who "join" a sales organization but never get in the business of selling. Please understand that you may have been presenting your product or service for years and still not have been "in the profession" of selling. Lack of commitment is a primary reason that the sales profession has earned the reputation for having a high turnover rate. Fortunately, this is changing, and the publi