Today's Reading
As you'll see throughout this book, the majority of sales success depends on your mindset and managing your emotions. Strategies and tactics are also important, of course, but they always come second. And the mindset stuff isn't easy to master. For instance, carnivores need to stay calm and keep moving forward, whether they're having the best or worst sales day of their lives. They need to maintain emotional stability, rather than getting super excited when on a hot streak and super depressed when they repeatedly fail. You can learn how to find that kind of calm focus.
Please note—this is really important—words like carnivore and kill don't mean you should aim to hurt, exploit, or metaphorically kill your customers. Just the opposite! You want them to feel good when a transaction is over. You want them to be grateful because you solved some kind of problem for them. You want them to love you so much that they'll recommend you to their friends.
You want to be killing your goals, killing your competitors, killing any flawed thinking that's holding you back—but never killing your customers.
It has always bothered me that salespeople get such a bad rap, like we're all sleazy, self-serving, and manipulative. I think there's a very clear line between using psychology and empathy to win a sale and manipulating people into a sale. I always try to stay on the right side of that line, and I'll teach you to do likewise.
Part of my mission in life is to bring more dignity to the reputation of the entire sales industry. We should be seen as an honorable profession, because sales is the lubricant of society. Everything people use had to be sold in one way or another, including the food you eat and the bed you sleep on. So I will never accept that sales is bad or shameful or dishonorable. Done right, sales is about creating positive experiences and win-win scenarios, through a skillful use of perception, framing, communication, and empathy. I've found it endlessly fascinating since I was a kid. Still do.
Speaking of when I was a kid, before we go any further, I should tell you a little about myself. Otherwise, like any prospect, you might be wondering why you should believe anything I have to say. Here's why....
HOW I GOT HERE
MY NEXT BIRTHDAY CAKE will still have fewer than thirty-five candles, but I've done and seen a lot in the world of sales. In fact, I've been studying and practicing sales since childhood, constantly experimenting to figure out what works, what doesn't, and why.
Some people discover the excitement of selling as adults, others as teenagers. For me, the sales bug goes all the way back to my childhood in Utah. It started with some door-to-door candy sale fundraisers, around age seven. Then during the summer when I was eight, I started my first business, selling used golf balls.
I can't remember who suggested it, but my plan was simple. Every evening that summer, I'd walk around the local course after the golfers were done. I'd fish Titleists out of ponds, scan the rough for TaylorMades, and search the nearby woods for shots that had gone way off course. Then on Saturday I'd bring my buckets of balls to a folding table on the back nine, where golfers happily paid me to refill their ammo. I soon realized I could sell them more than balls, so I asked my mom to buy bags of chips in bulk at Costco, plus some giant bottles of lemonade and plastic cups. Some Saturdays I went home with a hundred bucks, which was serious money! I was thrilled—until the owners of the golf course caught wind and banned me from the property.
When I was eleven, my brother got me to help him sell coupon books door to door to promote local businesses, including bowling alleys and restaurants, and tickets to the Utah Jazz. He was ten years older than me, and I thought he had the whole world figured out. Each time I sold a coupon book, we split the twenty-dollar commission. I realized that making ten dollars for a sale was good, but making ten dollars from someone else's work was even better. I filed that away for future reference.
When I turned thirteen, my cousin introduced me to an even better sales idea: painting house numbers on curbs. He taught me how to knock on a stranger's door and ask if visitors ever had trouble seeing their address from the street. If so, I explained, they might have a big problem if they needed the police or fire department in an emergency. I could solve their problem and make the house easy to identify, for just twenty dollars.
If my two-minute pitch worked (which it usually did), I'd use a stencil and spray-paint the curb, and ten minutes later I'd be off to the next house. If my pitch didn't work, or if someone was rude or even slammed the door on me, I learned to shrug it off. And if I closed five sales an hour, that was one hundred dollars—more than ten times what other middle school kids might make by babysitting or scooping ice cream. I got addicted to the "seller's high" of closing, and spoiled from all the cash at my disposal, even after paying for expenses.
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