Читать книгу Be a Sales Superstar. 21 Great Ways to Sell More, Faster, Easier in Tough Markets - Brian Tracy - Страница 3

This is a wonderful time to be alive and working in the profession of selling. Regardless of the ups and downs of the economy or temporary changes in your industry, there have never been more opportunities for you to achieve more of your goals – and enjoy a higher standard of living – than exist today by selling more of your products and services in the marketplace. And if anything, as you continually upgrade your skills, your situation is going to get better and better in the months and years ahead.

The better you become at selling, the more opportunities will open up for you. According to Dr. Thomas Stanley, coauthor of The Millionaire Next Door, fully 5 percent of self-made millionaires in America are salespeople who have sold for another company all their lives. The way they became millionaires was quite straightforward. First, they became very good at selling. Second, they earned an excellent living as a result. And third, they saved and invested a substantial part of their incomes as they went along. So can you.

My personal story in the field of selling is similar to that of many others. I started off with limited opportunities. My parents never had very much money. My father worked as a carpenter and my mother was a nurse, but they were not always regularly employed. I didn’t graduate from high school. In fact, I behaved so badly in high school that I was suspended and eventually expelled from three different schools.

When I left high school, the only work I could get was laboring jobs. I washed dishes in the back of a small hotel, stacked lumber in a sawmill, dug wells, and worked as a construction laborer, carrying heavy materials from one place to another. I worked on farms and ranches and as a galley boy on a ship in the North Atlantic. Finally, when I couldn’t get a laboring job, I drifted into straight commission sales, selling office supplies from door to door.

I wasn’t afraid to work, but hard work alone didn’t seem to be enough. I made hundreds of calls without making any sales. I used to run from office to office and from door to door so that I could see more people. But I was just barely hanging on by my fingernails.

Then one day I began to ask, “Why is it that some salespeople are more successful than others?” I heard that the top 20 percent of salespeople in every field earned 80 percent of the money. The top 10 percent earned even more. So I did something that changed my life.

I went to the top salesman in my company and asked him what he was doing differently from me. And he told me. He told me how to ask questions and how to develop a sales presentation. He told me how to respond to objections and to ask for orders. I then went out and did what he told me to do and my sales went up.

Then I learned that there were books on selling. I bought them one after another and began to study the subject of selling one to two hours every morning before I started out. And my sales went up even more. Then I learned about audio programs and sales seminars. As I listened to audio programs continually and attended every seminar I could find, I learned what the best salespeople had taken years to learn. And my sales continued to increase.