Essay on
The Psychology of Selling
by Brian Tracy
I chose this book to dive deeper into traditional sales techniques and sales guru Brian Tracy wrote a book recommended by many so here we go.
Our inner belief
Based on research it is impossible to earn more from your sales than what you believe you will earn. That means, selling is a lot about our self esteem and our own inner beliefs and expectations. The more we believe we will get, the higher the chances we will actually earn that amount.
Two sales obstacles
We all have experienced that. Fear of rejection and fear of failure are lurking behind the corner. These fears are highly demotivating, especially because in sales we often do get rejected. That is why it is so important to learn how to work with these fears. That means building up our self esteem and accepting the fact that rejection in sales is not personal.
Motivation for purchase
People buy based on emotion and rationalize it with logic. The two main motivators for someone to buy your product are “fear of loss” and “desire for gain”. As often mentioned in other books we have to ask questions to understand our potential buyer´s needs. Once we find out our buyers needs we have to convince them that our product fits their needs the best way possible.
Spend more time with better prospects
We often spend too much time with prospects that are not in fact our potential customers. That way we spend a lot of time and money with them when we can uncover whether or not they are our potential customers with a few questions and observations at the beginning of our first meeting. Our potential buyer asks himself these questions in order of importance: What's in it for me? What will it cost? What will I gain as a consequence? When will this outcome actually happen? What guarantee are you offering?
USP
Brian Tracy suggests that we should list our products 10 most appealing characteristics. Afterwards determine why someone wants to buy that product from our company and from me, personally and last but not least we identify our unique selling proposition (USP). That is the feature differentiating our product from other products on the market.
4 elements of strategic selling
Specialization, differentiation, segmentation and concentration. We should specify the benefits our product offers, differentiate it from competitors and find the right segment on the market to sell our product to.
Sales meeting
Brian recommends that when we are on the phone with our potential buyer we should not mention the price or speak about the product altogether. All we aim for is a personal meeting. Nowadays in the way online talks are normalized I believe we should aim at least for a virtual meeting face to face. At the beginning of our sales meeting we should use an opening sentence that has the potential buyer asking “Really? How do you do that? What is also important is to clarify 5 point at the meeting: Reassurance that you have an important thing to say, confirmation that you speak to the appropriate person, say the meeting will be brief, reassurance that they don't have to make any purchase and that you will not use any high pressure sales techniques.
Hot button
Discover what is your potential customer's hot button - the benefits they find the most interesting. Lead your presentation following this benefit. Another important step is to show numbers. Show how much they will save, how big will be their increase in sales etc. Discussion of price should be at the end of the presentation.
I think Biran gives a very good guidebook on how to approach sales. His approach is very traditional and very methodological so I think it is very good for the core concepts of the process of sales. I need to add that this book was published in 1995 which is almost thirty years ago. During these thirty years much has changed, especially with the massive emergence of technologies, digital advertising and overload of information. I would say when it comes to a face to face sales meeting these approaches are still very useful because we are still humans and some things don't change. But we definitely have to take into account the changes and adapt the tips in this book to today's environment.
