Despite the thousands of books published on truly successful sales practices, there are still a lot of companies who employ a culture of aggressiveness for their sales people.
By aggressive, I mean highly talkative, manipulative, emotion-free salesmen out to get your money no matter what. YUCK! I don’t know about you, but I HATE pushy sales folk.
I tried telemarketing once. Cold calling. Once. Never again! Why?
I always get the jitters if I have to be someone I’m not. With telemarketing you often have to say things to the client to entice them to make a purchase even though you know it’s not appropriate or that they don’t really need it or that what you’re offering won’t really help them.
It’s sickening to have to do that for a living. It feels like lying!
Yet on a personal scale, I can easily sell anything as long as I have tried the product and believe in it–there are now even instances where I don’t have to do anything and people come to me asking me to help them.
It’s then easy for me obviously, to pitch the product because I KNOW it actually works.
Success in selling, therefore, is not built on false selling tactics but on the application of well-observed approaches of human interaction.
The first step in attaining success is removing from your mental eye the picture of what a ‘successful salesman’ is. This applies to any sales medium, whether ad copy or face to face sales.
In the Secret of Selling Anything by Harry Browne, here are the myths you must let go of:
- You must be aggressive – To succeed, you’re supposed to dominate the sales process and impose your will upon the buyer.
- You must be tenacious. You just cannot accept “no” for an answer, you hang on until the buyer gives in and you stay on the trail of the prospect until you nail him.
- You must be a glib talker. You must have an answer for every objection to mesmerize people so they’ll buy things they don’t really want.
- You must manipulative. You control people by your overpowering will and insistence.
- You must have nerves of steel. You must never know fear and never let your emotions interfere with your work.
- You must be highly energetic. You are tireless and constantly on the go in finding new sales prospects.
- You must be single-minded. Never allow your family or other interests to interfere with your work.
- You must be excessively confident. You’re supposed to have overwhelming confidence in yourself and just ‘know’ you’re going to get the sale.
While that list has a good point or two here and there, it’s largely inaccurate.
You don’t need most of the stuff on that list to be successful. The time for that sort of salesmanship is long gone, and the faster you realize it and learn what REALLY works, the faster you’ll find success in your sales efforts, no matter the medium.