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WHY AND HOW TO SELL
YOUR WAY THROUGH LIFE

"You can succeed if others do not believe in you.
But you cannot succeed if you do not believe in yourself."

Dr. Sidney Newton Bremer
Successful Achievement

In this chapter, I'm not going to attempt to teach you how to sell -- that deserves an entire book and then some -- but I am going to make a case for your becoming a master salesperson.

You probably don't like the idea of being a salesperson. If you're like many people, you may think of salespeople as fast talkers - people who talk you into things. You may look at sales as combative: somebody has to lose for the salesperson to win. And you perhaps believe that you can't learn to sell, that there really are such things as "born" salespeople. Finally, like many people, you might think that selling is unimportant in your chosen business.

I am here to tell you that these ideas are all false and must be corrected. If you expect to make any money as an entrepreneur, the mastery of selling is absolutely necessary.

CHANGING YOUR ATTITUDES ABOUT SELLING

Myth #1: Selling is just fast talking.

Selling has more to do with listening than talking. Tests done with telemarketers have demonstrated that those who listened twice as much as they talked wound up booking five times as many appointments. Selling is empathy in action.

Myth #2: Selling sets up a win/lose situation.

Selling can have winners and losers, but it doesn't have to be that way. Personally, my type of selling is win/win; the person buying my ideas, products, or services benefits at least as much as I do. The most successful salespeople uncover, clarify, and fulfill people's strongest needs and desires. My speaking colleague Zig Ziglar's most famous quotation is "You can get anything in life you want by helping enough other people get what they want." Actually, you can get not only anything you want, you can get everything you want that way.

Myth #3: Sales ability is hereditary.

Selling is a combination of scientific and technical processes that can be learned by anybody, combined with the human qualities of compassion, empathy, and enthusiasm that exist -- or at least potentially exist -- in everybody.

Mark McCormack, author of What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, looks at it from a different angle. He believes that most people are born salespeople, but that we "un-learn" it as we grow up. If you stop to think about it, most kids do have good sales instincts. They're not afraid to ask for what they want -- persistently.

I suggest that you, too, were a born salesperson; that you already possess great sales instincts, even if you are suppressing them, and that you have the ability to release those instincts and to add new sales skills. With the combination of what you have inside naturally, and what you can learn, you can become a master salesperson.

Myth #4: Selling isn't important to every business.

Many books on business would have you believe that companies fail because of poorly selected locations, ill-prepared management, even bad bookkeeping. I think this is all B.S. Businesses fail, more often than not, because the owners sit on butts waiting for something to happen rather than going out and selling. You can also sell your way out of a lot of the trouble entrepreneurs typically stumble into if you have confidence and competence to sell.

BUT WHEN CAN I STOP SELLING?

I used to look forward to the time that I might be able to take a break from selling. But that's the wrong attitude. As entrepreneurs, we have to be in the selling mode 100% of the time, so we might as well enjoy it.

Entrepreneurs actually need to do more selling than many salespeople. We have to sell and re-sell ourselves on our ideas, goals, plans, and decisions each and every day. We have to sell our associates and our employees on doing the things we want done, the way we want them done, when we want them done. We have to sell our salespeople on our products, our services, our ideas, our leadership, themselves, their futures, on selling. We have to sell our vendors and suppliers that what we want done can be done, can be done by them, should be done by them, can be done when we need it done, should be done when we need it done, and can be done at reasonable costs, under favorable terms. We have to sell our accountants and lawyers on our strategies. We have to sell to our bankers, other lenders, and investors.

The decision is not whether to sell. The decision is whether to do it masterfully and whether to enjoy it.

THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT SALES YOU'LL EVER MAKE

I believe the most important sale you'll ever make in your life is selling yourself on selling. You must decide to master selling, to enjoy selling, and to sell.

The day you commit to a life of selling can be the day that turns your life around. When you start viewing your activities in the context of making sales, you'll get much more done, much faster, and much more effectively.

The second most important sale is selling you on you. Do you really believe you have what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur? How you feel about yourself and how you see yourself (self-image) combine to regulate what you permit yourself to do and be, much like the thermostat on the wall regulates temperature. No one can outperform his or her own self-esteem or self-image.

HOW TO BRIDGE THE CONFIDENCE CHASM

For new entrepreneurs, and sometimes for experienced entrepreneurs, there can be a wide gap between the capabilities a person thinks he or she has and the capabilities he or she perceives necessary for the tasks ahead. Facing that chasm can be as intimidating as standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating Evel Knieval's motorcycle leap.

It has consistently been my experience that people underestimate themselves and overestimate what's necessary for the success they seek. The millionaire entrepreneurs that I know are not much smarter or more knowledgeable than the average person on the street, nor are they gifted or somehow pre-ordained for exceptional achievement. In many cases, they're not as smart as most people - believe me, I've met some pretty dumb rich people. Just about anybody could do what they do, it's just that few will do what they do.

Dan Kennedy's Eternal Truth #8
The willingness to do whatever it takes
is infinitely more important than
knowing everything there is to know
about how to do it.

One good way to bridge the confidence chasm is to make a point of discovering how little the so-called experts and superstars actually do know. You'll be shocked, as I was shortly after I'd determined that I would build a business as a speaker and seminar leader.

I had given about 30 speeches to sales organizations, clubs, and other groups around Phoenix, and had decided it was time to hang around the real pros at the National Speakers Association to find out how this business was really supposed to be run. By the end of the first afternoon workshop I attended, I was thoroughly depressed -- not at how much I yet had to learn but at how little the "superstars" knew! I got over my disappointment when it dawned on me that I was a whole lot farther along than I'd guessed and that I was clearly "qualified" to be a big success in this field.

This is not meant as any kind of criticism of this association. I've had similar experiences with other groups. I've discovered, over and over again, that the chasm between my self-assessment and my perception of the experience of the wizards is easily bridged.

More recent was my entry into the infommercial and video production business. When I went to my first couple of Hollywood videotapings, I was pretty intimidated and I was eager to see the highly paid geniuses at work. To make a long story short, I discovered that the technical know-how was easily purchased, and that the more important sales and marketing know-how could come from me just as easily as anyone else. Shortly after that, I produced my first infommercial from scratch, and I did everything: wrote the script, rented the facility, hired the crew, supervised the taping and edited the show, all for about 15% of the typical Hollywood budget. That show has since made the client quite rich, generating millions of dollars and airing continuously for years.

This is not to say that I haven't made some mistakes in this business. I have - big ones. But I also see the most experienced, supposedly brightest experts in this field making big mistakes now and then, too. Now, based on my actual track record, I'm looked at as one of those top experts.

The bottom line is that success really is simple. There are commonsense fundamentals that make up 80% of the essence of each and every business. These fundamentals are transferable from one field to another. Once you grasp these, it's not difficult to collect or hire the other 20% of specialized knowledge.

You can hire expertise and experience at surprisingly low cost. Some of the smartest people in the world are working for wages, employed by companies founded by "dumb" entrepreneurs. You can also learn what you need to know about the specialized aspects of any given business in a hurry. What you bring to the table, and what is not so easily duplicated or obtained, is entrepreneurial guts.

Dan Kennedy's Eternal Truth #9
The ability to win is easily transferred
from one business to another.

Earl Nightingale, one of the most famous success philosophers of all time and founder of the Nightingale-Conant Corporation, once pointed out that if there were no successful examples for you to observe, you could just as easily learn how to succeed from unsuccessful people! All you would need to do would be note what they do, and then do the opposite. That idea applies to every business group I've ever been a part of or consulted in: about 5% of the people in the group rake in 95% of the money. The other 95% of the group represent sustained mediocrity. They have lousy work habits, poor self-images, vague and disorganized goals, waste huge quantities of time, and lack imagination and initiative. By carefully listening to them, you can identify what not to think about and talk about; by observing their actions, you can see what not to do.

The confidence chasm gets a lot smaller as you realize how basic bridging the gap is.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT SALE

You can't sell what you haven't bought.

I'll often ask businesspeople these questions:

  • If you were the customer, would buying from you be the clear, inarguably best choice?
  • Why should I do business with you instead of any of your competitors?
  • Is your product or service a lot better than anything else out there? How?

It may surprise you to know that most can't answer these questions. They hem and haw, stammer and stutter, and, at best, mutter some goofy slogan.

If you can't answer these questions, you're probably not completely sold on the superiority of what you're selling, and if you're not sold, you can't sell.

In his great book How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, Frank Bettger revealed that enthusiasm made the difference for him. But I don't believe in acting enthusiastic; I in being enthusiastic, and that requires good reasons. You need to structure or re-structure your business, product, service, idea, or promise so that you are sold on the superiority of what you offer. After that, convincing others is easy.

To be convincing, you have to be convinced.
© Dan Kennedy 2005. All Rights Reserved.