The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible pdfdrive com

It seems that most of the decisions we make in life are similar to backing up in the night and
hitting something, and then getting out to see what it was.
Basic Training
I was hired on straight commission and got the three-part sales training
program: “Here’s your cards; here’s your brochures; there’s the door!” Armed
with this “training,” I began my sales career cold-calling, knocking on office
doors during the day and knocking on residential doors in the evenings.
The person who hired me couldn’t sell. But he told me that sales is a
“numbers game.” He said that all I had to do was talk to enough people, and
eventually I would find someone who would buy. We call this the “mud against
the wall” method of selling. (If you throw enough mud against the wall,
somewhere, somehow, some of it will stick.) This wasn’t much, but it was all I
had.
Then someone told me that sales was really not a “numbers game.” Rather, it
was a “rejection game.” The more rejections you collect, the more sales you are
likely to get. Equipped with this advice, I ran from place to place so I could get
rejected more often. They said that I had the “gift of gab,” so I used it. When a
person seemed uninterested, I would speak louder and faster. But even though I
hurried from prospect to prospect, and spoke louder and faster to each person, I
was barely holding on by my fingernails.
The Turning Point
After six months of struggling, making just enough sales to pay for my single
room in a small guesthouse, I finally did something that changed my life: I went

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room in a small guesthouse, I finally did something that changed my life: I went
to the most successful guy in our company and asked him what he was doing
differently from me.
I wasn’t afraid of hard work. I would get up at five or six in the morning,
prepare for the day, and be waiting in the parking lot at 7:00 AM when my first
prospects came to work. I worked all day long, going from office to office and
company to company. In the evenings, I would knock on residential doors until
nine or ten at night. If the light was on, I would make the call.
The top salesman in my office, who was only a couple of years older than me,
had a completely different approach. He would roll into the office about nine
o’clock. A few minutes later, a prospect would come in, and they’d sit and talk.
After a few minutes’ conversation, the prospect would take out his checkbook
and write a check for our product.
The salesman would then go out that morning and make another couple of
sales, and then have lunch with another prospect. In the afternoon he would
make another couple of sales and then perhaps have a drink or dinner with
another prospect. He was selling five and ten times as much as me, or anyone
else in our office, and he hardly seemed to be working at all.