Selling The American Dream

Preface

People continue to pour into America.  The opportunity here is beyond that of any other place in the world.  You can make more money and have a better life as a laborer in America than the middle class in most other countries.

Americans work hard at their careers.  A lot of pride goes into the many professions that make up our great land.  Many great Americans work their way from an entry level to the top seat in the boardroom.  Some professions require decades of education.  Some require multiple certifications.  All are important to our free enterprise system.

Of all the professions Americans pursue, the profession of sales is most important.  Every walk of life requires a sales professional somewhere in the mix.  Someone has to be the person who approaches clients and asks them to buy the goods or services. 

Most people don’t like the idea of approaching people and asking them for money.  When your child is involved in a fundraiser, you often end up buying enough products to make the teacher happy rather than exposing your child to all those people who might say no.  As a culture, we don’t like being rejected or refused.  We prefer having things our way.  So very few of us enter the world of selling.

If you’re reading this book you obviously are drawn to a sales career.  Congratulations!  You’re different from your friends and neighbors.  Fewer than 20% of Americans are comfortable in the sales profession.  But those who enter sales and enjoy it end up doing very well for themselves. 

Most people in sales don’t make huge amounts of money.  But all people in sales have more freedom and more security in their future than any other profession.  That’s a bold statement and a true one.  Selling is selling and once you master the art, you can sell any product or service in any town of this great country.

The purpose of this book is to help you determine if selling is your calling, and if it is, to give you the tools you’ll need in order to succeed in a sales career.  I admit you won’t find much negative information regarding the sales business in this book – just ask your friends and they can fill you in on how bad it is to be a salesman – but you will find a candid report on the life of a sales professional.

The tools necessary for a person to succeed in sales are present in the bulk of this book.   Most salespeople in America only receive training from their company, and that training is usually product knowledge training.  While you need to know everything about your product, you also need to know how to sell. 

Conducting Sales Seminars all over our great country, I encounter people who have been sales professionals for years and who have no idea why they are succeeding or, worse yet, who are failing and don’t know why.  The corrective action when a sales person begins to experience a low closing ratio is usually for management to put more pressure on the salesperson.  That’s about as smart as discovering you’re lost and speeding up.  If what you’re doing isn’t working, doing it under pressure is just going to make it worse.

This book is designed to show you how to sell.  That begins with traits of successful salespeople and continues with an exact procedure for any sales call.  Then you’ll read how to determine which clients you should call on and what to do when clients are confrontational.

Special chapter