Think Like a
Top Salesperson
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.
In less than one year, I went from calling door to door, making one or two small sales per week, to managing a six-country sales organization and earning thousands of dollars a month. The key was simple. I just found out how other top salespeople sold. I then did the same things that the top people were doing until I got the same results that they were getting. This method has worked for everyone who has ever tried it, and it will work for you as well.
The great law of human destiny, especially in sales, is the Law of Cause and Effect. This law says that for everything that happens, there is a reason or reasons. If you want a particular goal, or effect, in your life, you can have it. Simply seek out someone else who has already achieved that particular effect or result, and then find out what he or she did to get it. If you then do the same things that the other person did, you will eventually get the same results. This cause-and-effect principle explains exactly how people have gone from failure to success in every field of endeavor throughout history.
The most important application of the Law of Cause and Effect is this: Thoughts are causes and conditions are effects.
Your outer world tends to be a reflection of your inner world. You invariably attract into your life the people, the circumstances, the opportunities, and even the sales that are in harmony with your dominant thoughts. As you change your thinking about yourself and your possibilities, you change your life. This is the way the law works.
Perhaps the most important discovery in human history, the foundation of all religions, philosophies, metaphysics, and psychology, is this: You become what you think about most of the time.
Just think! You become what you think about most of the time. Your outer world eventually corresponds to your inner world. And since only you can decide what it is you think about, you are the person who ultimately determines what happens to you in life.
Over a period of twenty-five years, in research conducted by Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania, more than 350,000 salespeople were interviewed to find out what they think about most of the time. Their incomes were compared with their thought patterns to determine what kind of thinking patterns most accurately predict the highest incomes.
And do you know what the top salespeople think about most of the time? It’s simple. They think about what they want and how to get it. They think and talk, all day long, about their goals and how to achieve their goals. And because the more you think and talk about your goals, the more positive and enthusiastic you become, these salespeople seem to sell five and ten times as much as the average person, who thinks about his or her problems most of the time.
The rule is this: If you think like the top salespeople think, you will eventually do the things that the top salespeople do, and you will get the same results that the top salespeople get. And if you don’t, you won’t. It is as simple as that.
Some salespeople are satisfied earning $25,000 a year. This is consistent with the way they think most of the time. This is their financial “comfort zone.” Other salespeople would be dissatisfied if their incomes dropped below $100,000 a year. This is their comfort zone.
Researchers have discovered that there is very little difference between the people who are earning a small amount and the people who are earning a huge amount. They have very much the same levels of talent and ability. They are surrounded with very much the same number of opportunities and possibilities. The only difference is that the highest paid salespeople have decided to earn that amount, and the only question they ask—all day long—is, How?
According to the studies, the most important single quality for great success in selling is the quality of optimism. Top salespeople are far more optimistic than average people. Because of this optimism, they have high expectations of success. Because they confidently expect to be successful, they make more calls on more prospects than the average salesperson. In addition, because they expect to succeed eventually, they persist much longer. They call back more often. They believe that their success is inevitable. It is only a matter of time, as long as they keep calling and calling back.
As a result of calling on more people in the first place and calling back more often, they make more sales. When they make more sales, their success reinforces their belief in the value of making more calls and calling back more often. This process, repeated over and over, becomes a habit of high performance. This habit assures that they move higher and higher in income and personal success.
Here is another key point in superstar selling: Your self-esteem is directly related to how much you sell.
The highest paid and most successful salespeople have high levels of self-esteem. Self-esteem is best defined as how much you like yourself. The more you like yourself, the better you do. The better you do, the more you like yourself. Each reinforces the other.
The more you like yourself, the higher goals and standards you set for yourself. The more you like yourself, the greater is your confidence in your ability to succeed and the more likely you are to persist in the face of adversity. The more you like yourself, the more others will like you and the more open they will be to buying from you and recommending you to their friends.
Here is an important parallel. Mental fitness is very much like physical fitness. If you do certain physical exercises each day, you will eventually become very fit physically. By the same token, if you do certain mental exercises every day, you will soon become very fit mentally. You will develop high levels of self-esteem and self-confidence and a positive mental attitude.
Therefore, the starting point of great success in selling is for you to begin to think the way top salespeople think. Each time you think the way a top salesperson thinks, you become more optimistic and creative. You feel happier and more effective. You experience more energy and determination. You make more calls and better presentations. You close more sales and you make more money. When you learn and practice the mental qualities of top salespeople, your whole life opens up for you like a summer sunrise. Let’s begin.
