Even in the world of sales there are some books that deserve to be read sooner or later. Aside from The Challenger Sale: how to take control of the customer conversation. 2011. Portfolio Penguin, another book worth reading is Brian Tracy’s, The Psychology of Selling. Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible (2004).
Brian Tracy share strategies, methods and ideas to sell better and faster. These strategies can be applied by anyone but with different results.
The book is divided into eight chapters and goes over the main aspects of everything behind a sale: from the reasons that drive people to buy to the obstacles encountered during a negotiation, to what to choose to buy, to how much the support of the seller is fundamental to overcome the resistance to the purchase and can instead induce to take the right steps to close the negotiation successfully.
Acquiring the skills to become a good seller is not always easy so going over the relevant points would be a good place to start.
Having a positive personal attitude
The author starts from the observation that it is enough to change a few things in our approach as salespeople to get better results: “Small differences in ability can lead to enormous differences in results.” and to then identify the areas where you need to improve.
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Find prospects
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Build relationships
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Identify needs
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Propose solution
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Respond to objections
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Close the contract
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Get a new contract or referral for a new subject
But which are the most important for the author to have good results?
First of all, one must start from oneself, have a good opinion of oneself, a good understanding and good control of one’s inner dialogue. Added to this is being oriented towards achieving one’s goals, as this propensity increases people’s ability to actually push themselves beyond their limits.
To facilitate the “goal oriented” approach Brian Tracy recommends writing down a list of 100 goals, even small ones, related to your career, and then suggests organizing them in terms of priorities. Writing a list helps people visualize them and make them as achievable as possible, fueling a positive attitude.
For example, observing that our prospects respond positively to the sales techniques we are using gives us a sense of success and positivity. Clearly, from the long list of goals we write we need to decide what we actually want to achieve and understand which activities will help us do it.
Understanding Buyers’ Emotions
To facilitate the purchase it is important to keep in mind that people want to buy to improve their lives, according to Brian Tracy “every decision is emotional”, therefore keeping in mind the values and emotions of buyers should be in first place. At that point it is necessary to highlight the way in which our products / services manage to satisfy these values and emotions. A different aspect than focusing on price and quality.
In addition, more often than not, people decide not to buy for fear of making a mistake. So for this reason it is important to try to act on the motivations that push people to buy, that is, to feel safe, to be liked, to have a certain status and a certain prestige, to have health and well-being, to have power and popularity, to be able to grow and change as people.
Develop your own creative thinking
According to the author, self-confidence is also essential for developing one’s creativity. And practicing creative thinking is also important for those involved in sales, as we must always find new ways to sell to people, to make people understand the advantages and benefits of buying a certain product or service.
To do list
To reach our objectives we need to follow an essential to-do list:
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know the product / service thoroughly and how much it would be useful to future customers;
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be clear about the differentiating elements from competitors;
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make a segment of potential customers to understand who can benefit most from a certain product and focus above all on these customers.
In fact, you need to spend most of your time with your most important customers, using the right language for the prospect.
Understanding the Buyer Category
The writer states that there are different types of buyers and for each one it is necessary to understand the psychology and potentially the category they belong to in order to implement the right behavior. There is, for example, the apathetic buyer, who is someone you don’t want to insist with; the one who knows exactly what he wants, so unless we have what he wants, it makes no sense to insist; or the analytical buyer, who needs all the details to be able to make the right decision; or the impatient one, with which one must immediately finalize.
Work on ourselves, consistently and constantly
Finally, Tracy shares a list of things to do in order to become a great salesperson:
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Do what you love
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Determine exactly what you want
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Pursue your goals with determination
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Learn consistently
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Use your time well
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Follow people with strong leadership
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Character is the most important thing
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Free your creativity
In short, all that remains is to work on ourselves constantly, to obtain good results and improve our approach in our work as a salesman.
