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Studying Sales and
Salesmanship
Most people are always striving to better
themselves.
For proof, check the sales figures on the number
of self improvement books sold each year.
This is not a pitch for you to jump in and start
selling these kinds of books, but it is an indication of people's awareness
that in order to better themselves, they have to continue improving their
personal selling abilities.
To excel in any selling situation, you must have
confidence, and confidence comes, first and foremost, from knowledge.
You have to know and understand yourself and your
goals.
You have to recognise and accept your weaknesses
as well as your special talents.
This requires a kind of personal honesty that not
everyone is capable of exercising.
In addition to knowing yourself, you must continue
learning about people.
Just as with yourself, you must be caring,
forgiving and laudatory with otheòs.
In any sales effort, you must accept other people
as they are, not as you would like for them to be.
One of the most common faults of sales people is
impatience when the prospective customer is slow to understand or make a
decision.
The successful salesperson handles these
situations the same as he would if he were asking a girl for a date, or even
applying for a new job.
Learning your product, making a clear presentation
to quality new prospects, and closing more sales will take a lot less time once
you know your own capabilities and failings, and understand and care about the
prospects you are calling upon.
Our society is predicated upon selling, and all of
us are selling something all the time.
We move up or stand still in direct relation to
our sales efforts.
Everyone is included, whether we're attempting to
be a friend to a co-worker, a neighbour, or selling multi million pound
engineering projects.
Accepting these facts will enable you to
understand that there is no such thing as a born salåsman. Indeed, in
selling, we all begin at the same starting line, and we all have the same
finish line as the goal - a successful sale.
Most assuredly, anyone can sell anything to
anybody.
As a qualification to this statement, let us say
that some things are easier to sell than others, and some people work harder at
selling than others.
But regardless of what you're selling, or even how
you're attempting to sell it, the odds are in your favour.
If you make your presentation to enough people,
you'll find a buyer.
The problem with most people seems to be in making
contact getting their sales presentation seen by, read by, or heard by enough
people.
But this really shouldn't be a problem, as we'll
explain later.
There is a problem of impatience, but this too can
be harnessed to work in the salesperson's favour.
We have established that we're all sales people in
one way or another.
So whether we're attempting to move up from
forklift driver to warehouse manager, waitress to hostess, salesman to
salesmanager or from mail order dealer to president of the largert sales
organisation in the world, it's vitally important that we continue
learning.
Getting up out of bed in the morning; doing what
has to be done in order to sell more units of your product; keeping records,
updating your materials; planning the direction of further sales efforts; and
all the while i.creasing your own knowledge - all this very definitely requires
a great deal of personal motivation, discipline and energy.
But then the rewards can be beyond your wildest
dreams, for make no mistake about it, the selling profession is the highest
paid occupation in the world!
Selling is challenging.
It demands the utmost of your creativity, and
innovative thinking.
The more success you want, and the more dedicated
you are to achieving your goals, the more you'll sell.
Hundreds of people the world over become
millionaires each month through selling. Many of them were flat broke and
unable to find a "regular" job when they began their selling careers. Yet
they've done it, and you can do it too!
Remember, it's the surest way to all the wealth
you could ever want. You get paid according to your own efforts, skill, and
knowledge of people. If you're ready to become rich, then think seriously about
selling a product or service (preferably something exclusively yours) something
that you "pull out of your brain"; something that you write, manufacture or
produce for the benefit of other people.
But failing this, the situations vacant ads are
full of opportunities for ambitious sales people.
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