Sell or Be Sold(50)

One day I was asking a buddy of mine about Elena—he also had been trying to date her. He told me she wasn’t really interested in a relationship, but was more into shooting guns and her career as an actress. He was actually giving me reasons why she wasn’t much of a catch (sounds like a salesman that couldn’t close a deal). I then pursued this information regarding shooting and found out that Elena was one of the top ten women clay shooters in the state of California, and that shooting was her passion. I called the L.A. Gun Club, rented the shooting range, and hired the best coach in Los Angeles for the following Saturday. I then called her again and left another message on her recorder telling her that I had booked the club and the trainers and was asking her out for a day of shooting. (Find out what they are interested in, not what you are interested in.) Sixty seconds later, she called me back for the first time! We had our first real encounter that Saturday, and we were married less than a year later.

My wife was the toughest sale I’d ever made, and I can tell you it was worth it. I have been in deals as large as $80 million, but it didn’t even compare to getting this girl to first pay attention to me and then go out with me, and later being able to propose to her and know she would say yes.

My wife will tell you today that I saw us long before she did and that my conviction and complete knowingness of us as a couple were very difficult to resist. She will not say that I imposed or pressured or stalked her. She’ll tell you that I predicted the future and created it by knowing what I wanted, staying with it, and continuing to do whatever was necessary to get the deal done. My wife would not say that I sold her in some negative context but rather that I showed my love for her and put it all out there, regardless of her response to me (Give-Give-Give).

I will tell you that the most important sale of my life was this sale, and also that if it were not for my view of selling as a needed skill in life and an understanding of it technically, I would not have been able to get this worthy close.





SUMMARY


Your ability to persuade others determines by itself how well you will do in all areas of your life. Selling is an absolute necessity for really living life and making your dreams come true. While selling is a career for many, it’s a requirement for all. You need to sell, negotiate, and persuade others in life to get what you want. How well you can do that will determine what kind of life you will have and how many people you can influence.

Become a student of this thing called selling. Don’t treat it like something distasteful that you have to do or that you’ll hire others to do. Selling is the ultimate fuel of every economy in the world. Without people selling ideas, concepts, and products, the world would never improve. If you want to make a difference on this planet, learn how to sell. If you want to make sure your worthy ideas get known to the world, you’ll have to sell. If you want your way in life, if you want your company to do well, if you want your family to prosper, learn the information in this book, and I guarantee that you will prosper in ways other people considered impossible.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN QUESTION


Write an essay about what you learned from this chapter and from this book so far, and describe how you are going to apply that in order to get what you want in life.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE PERFECT SALES PROCESS


In this chapter, I want to briefly introduce you to what a successful sales process looks like. First, it would satisfy all parties involved and increase the effectiveness of the user.

For fifty years, there has been very little change in how people sell things. Most of the information is dated, with encouragement to control your customers and spend long periods of time with them, believing the longer you spend with them the more indebted they become. The reality is that people have changed over the past fifty years. Wives are making more of the decisions about what is bought and how money is spent; both husbands and wives are now more likely to be employed; people have less time; there is access to more information; and some studies suggest entire generational changes whereby the buyer doesn’t want to even engage a human being when making a purchase.

The perfect sales process then would have to be fast and easy for the buyer; easy and effective for the salesperson; provide credible information as easily as the buyer can access it himself; treat the buyer as an informed person, knowing he has access to knowledge; and ultimately satisfy the customer and the company by consummating a sale.

The first thing I would look at in any sales process is how to shorten and simplify it, just because of the amount of sensitivity buyers demonstrate to time. Whether filling up the car; checking out a gym membership; or shopping for an outfit, groceries, or technology, time is on your buyer’s mind. How long will I be here? How long will it take? Am I going to get stuck with a person I don’t want to spend time with?