I am not one of those sales coaches who believe that everyone has the potential to be a great salesperson, any more than I believe that everyone has the potential to be a great actor, a top-notch surgeon, or an ace fighter pilot. I have worked with some of the truly great salespeople, and I have noticed something about them that makes them quite different from other people. Great salespeople are usually people persons. They are curious. They engage others in conversation. They get fully involved in other people’s lives, even if it’s only for that moment when they’re making the sale. They have a genuine interest in other people, in the situations those people are in. They nurture relationships, and through those relationships whatever products and services they are selling tend to sell themselves. Just because you have “the gift,” however, does not mean that you are destined to be a great salesperson. I have seen many talented candidates fail miserably, simply because they didn’t have the right mindset, the right mentor, or the sticktoitism required to succeed. In this chapter, I reveal the seven steps you need to take to get from pointA(where you are now) to point B (the success you dream of). These steps will work not only in your professional life but also in your personal life, and true success requires attention to both. Maybe you have what it takes to be a great salesperson and maybe you don’t. This is something you need to discover on your own. However, if you have what it takes, and you follow the steps I describe in this chapter, you will be well on your way to achieving your goals.
Step One: Be a Salesperson, Not an Order Taker I use the term salesperson to describe individuals who take responsibility for their own success. A salesperson is an entrepreneur constantly in the process of expanding his or her circle of influence to encompass more clients, partners, and opportunities. Those who rely on their company to present them with a list of prospective buyers are merely order takers. Instead of taking control of their own destiny, they whine about market conditions, their boss, their lack of resources, and whatever else they believe is getting in the way of their success. The global economy, along with the Internet, has compelledmore and more individuals to become salespeople. Now, more than ever before, just about everyone sells some kind of product or service. Whether you have your own small business selling products on eBay, or are a traditional salesperson selling products or services on behalf of someone else’s company, or are a job candidate presenting your qualifications to a prospective employer, you take on the role of salesperson and are ultimately responsible for your own success. Even the president of the United States has something to sell to the voters. Order takers burden themselveswith the mentality of employees. They go to work at a certain time, watch the clock, and leave at a certain time. They let the boss supply the phones and the computers and the marketing materials. They may evenwork for a fixed salary. That’s totally contrary to the essence of a sales career. In sales, the more you sell, themore you make. That’s the great thing about sales. It lets us—the salespeople—determine just how successful we want to be. Many of these passive salespeople believe that they can sell anything. They may say, “You just get the customers in the door and I’ll do the rest.” You hear salespeople voice this attitude in car dealerships, clothing stores, stock brokerages, and insurance offices. It is so misguided. It is guaranteed to keep a salesperson stuck in the lower ranks of the profession. The first step in turning yourself into a top-producing sales professional is to think like an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is one who sets his or her own goals and then finds the means to achieve them. An entrepreneur is an independent contractor, even if he or she works for a large organization like a department store or car dealership. Being an entrepreneur means that you make the majority of the decisions that shape your working day. You create and maintain your own database of clients. You invest in your own technology—a computer, a handheld wireless device (such as a BlackBerry), your own web site and blog, and so on. You create your own marketing materials, even if they’re as simple as thank-you cards that you send to customers. Being an entrepreneur means you set your own financial goals. These goals are independent of whatever quota your boss sets. These goals represent where you want to be in a year’s time, in 5 years, in 10 years. They can involve specific purchases you want to make, like a new house or car, or include a target date for your retirement. Your job becomes a way to fund these dreams. This basic attitude may be the most important thing I talk about in this book. If you get nothing else right, get this right: Think like an entrepreneur, not an employee, like a salesperson, not an order taker. What you need to realize is that you are a business unto yourself. You’re a little corporation. It’s You, Inc. You can make it whatever you want it to be. It can be as small or as large as you want. This remains true even if you work for somebody else. The true salesperson operates as an independent contractor. This gives you the right to take your success to whatever level you want.
Step Two: Get All the Education You Can When I was just starting my career in real estate, I knew another guy who was just getting started. Each of us took an entirely different approach. While I dove right in and started selling houses, he was taking every real estate course he could fit into his schedule. He was a GRI (Graduate Realtor Institute) before he had ever listed his first house. He was a CRS (Certified Residential Specialist) before he showed a house. He took every class, went to every seminar, and signed up for every workshop available. I used to say, “How crazy is that? The guy doesn’t make any money. He’s getting all this education—for what?” Although this agent was not making money right out of the gate, he quickly achieved success and became the fifth or sixth top agent in the metropolitan Detroit area. He was probably pulling in a quarter of a million dollars a year. What he did was to take the doctor or lawyer approach to real estate. He went out and got his education first.
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