12 Great Selling Skills!
Chapter 2: Making a Personal Sales Plan
Find something you really love
and you’ll never have to work a day in your life. – Harvey Mackay(1)
TOP 20% of the best sales people in every field earn more
than 80% of the total income of all sales people.
Your goal is to be one of those top 20%,
and then continuously increase your sales and income.
In this chapter,
you will learn that successful people achieve far,
far beyond the average person
by planning their upcoming actions and goals.
What is the most important
and highest paying job you have ever had?
The answer is:
Think!
The way you think
and the quality of those thoughts is an extremely important factor
in determining the quality of your life.
The more accurately you think about yourself,
your goals,
and the activities needed to achieve them,
the higher your chances of succeeding in everything you do.
“A person is obviously going to excel and do best in those areas in which
he or she invests the most attention
and takes the most action.” – Grant Cardone
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Your Most Valuable Asset
What is your most valuable asset?
It’s your ability to make money.
Your earning potential can be defined
by your ability to produce results
that make others willing to pay you.
The difference between high performers
and low performers is that high performers develop a high level
of monetization and low performers do not.
Your earning potential at the present time is the sum of your knowledge
and experience,
your habits and skills,
all your education and training, up to now.
The good news is that all of those abilities,
knowledge,
and habits can be improved.
You can increase your earning potential continuously
and throughout your career.
However, just like other assets,
your earning potential can increase or decrease.
For those in the top 20%,
their earning potential increases
by an average of 11% per year
(according to data from studies conducted
at the University of Chicago).
For the remaining 80%,
their earning potential,
if they still have a job,
increases by about 1% per year,
if at all.
If your most valuable asset grew
by an average of 11% per year,
your income would double within seven years,
then double again,
and double again and again.
And on your career path,
you will soon become one of the highest paid people in society.
But if your income is only growing by 1% per year
because you are not doing anything
to increase your earning potential,
it will take you 72 years to double your income.
And that’s as long as the industry
or economy you live in is free of inflation,
unemployment,
or collapse.
Perhaps the most important difference in work life today,
when compared to the past,
is that each of us has taken full responsibility for our careers
and financial futures.
As I said in the previous chapter,
you are the president of the company with one employee
– yourself.
You are responsible for selling a product
– your own personal service.
Your main goal at work is to increase the quality
and quantity of the services you provide
thereby increasing your income and quality of life.
The biggest mistake you can make is thinking you’re working for someone,
not yourself.
You are the president of a company called Your Company.
You are the chairman of your own career,
your own life,
and your own future.
You determine your income over time
by what you do and what you cannot do.
Often the things you fail to do are the things
that have the biggest impact on your life.
If you fail to plan your life and work every day,
every hour,
the price you will pay lies in the results you achieve
and your ability to make money.
If you fail to organize and prioritize the things you do,
this failure will hurt you.
If you are not continuously improving your knowledge
and skills to become better and better,
turning your earning power into a prized asset,
it will have a negative effect on your life,
and your future.
“Never cut anything,
never dilute greatness,
never pull back on your horsepower,
and never put a limit on your ambition,
drive, and passion.” – Grant Cardone
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Your Most Valuable Resource
What is your most valuable resource?
The answer is: time!
At the beginning of your career,
if you are like everyone else,
you will have little or no money,
but a lot of time.
You enter the market
and exchange your services for money.
If you are a good trader,
your income will increase gradually over time.
When you have reached the final stages of your career,
you will have very little time,
but you need to accumulate a lot of money already.
The worst thing that can happen to everyone
are that they work all their lives,
trading 30,
40 years of hard work only to end up
with no money to live a leisurely life in old age.
Unfortunately,
that’s the situation a lot of people find themselves in today.
“Show up early,
treat people with respect
and perform at the highest levels till the world can’t deny you.” – Grant Cardone
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Personal planning
The purpose of strategic planning in business is
to increase return on equity (ROE), which is defined as:
“Increasing financial returns based on
a given amount of invested in the business.”
The goal of personal planning is also
to increase your return on equity.
But in this respect,
ROE is defined
as the rate of return on energy invested (return on energy).
That is increasing financial income based on “human capital”.
Mental, emotional,
and physical energy make up your human capital,
and that’s all you really have to sell at the start of your career.
A person’s standard of living and income is determined entirely
by his or her ability to sell personal energy in the market
to achieve worthy results
and achievements.
Unfortunately, most people never learn
that the ability to make money
is their most valuable and valuable asset.
They don’t know how to appreciate it.
They ignored it.
They assume that it is something beyond their control.
Most people spend their time indiscriminately and indiscriminately.
They wake up in the morning,
drink coffee,
go to work to listen to music,
chat with co-workers,
have lunch, have coffee,
make a few sales calls,
and then go home to watch TV.
But that schedule is not for you.
Your life is extremely precious.
Your goal is to live life to the fullest possible,
trading every minute of every hour
for the highest possible return on energy investment.
Remember, you are your own boss.
You decide your own income.
You write your own receipt.
If you are not happy with your current income,
go to the nearest mirror
and negotiate with your boss.
If you want more money,
there’s only one way you can get there
– go out
and make more good sales.
And this decision is completely in your control.
“Rich people don’t get rich by accident
and poor people don’t stay poor by accident.” – Grant Cardone
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GOSPA strategy
In the personal planning process,
you always start with your goals
– short,
medium and long term goals.
Where are you currently standing?
Where do you want to be in the future?
And what steps do you need to take to get there?
There is a powerful way to help you think
and make better decisions than using the GOSPA strategic thinking
and planning method (long-term goals,
short-term goals,
strategies,
plans and actions
– goals,
objectives,
strategies,
plans and activities):
“People will pay more for a great attitude than they will for a great product.
The individual who combines a great attitude with a great product.
Becomes unstoppable!” – Grant Cardone
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• Long-term goals.
Those are the goals and desired results
that you need to work hard for a long time to achieve.
Goal setting starts
with deciding exactly how much money you want to earn next year.
You can start by taking the total income
for the year you made the most money so far
and add 25 to 50% of that amount.
For example, if the highest amount you have ever made in a year is $50,000,
you set a goal to earn $62,500 within the next 12 months.
If you’re more ambitious,
you can set a goal of making $75,000 within the next 12 months.
Once you have determined your annual income and sales goals,
the next step is to break it down into monthly,
weekly,
and daily goals.
For example, if your goal is to earn $60,000 next year,
your monthly income would be $5,000.
If your monthly goal is $5,000
and you work 50 weeks per year
then you need to make $1,200 per week
which equates to $240 per workday.
The final, and possibly the most important,
exercise you will need
to do will be determining how much you will earn per hour.
How much money will you want
or need to earn per hour
to be able to meet your daily,
weekly,
and annual income goals?
If your annual income goal is $60,000,
you divide it by 2,000 hours
(250 workdays, 8 hours a day)
to determine your desired hourly earnings of $30.
From today onwards,
throughout your workday,
refuse to do anything that doesn’t pay you more than
or equal to $30 per hour.
“Does your money work as hard for you as you work for it?” – Grant Cardone
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• Short-term goal.
Short-term goals are the sub-goals that you need
to achieve on your way to achieving your long-term goals.
For example, you will have to call a specific number of potential customers
to get a specific number of meetings
and it will lead to the number of offers corresponding
to a certain number of successful deals labor.
Some amount
Specifically, successful transactions will bring specific income numbers.
In addition,
between the small goals will be the goal
of developing a complete,
correct understanding of the product
and improving your sales and time management skills.
Those are all essential goals that you need to accomplish
in order to achieve your long-term income goals.
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• Strategy.
There are many different ways you can accomplish your goal.
For example, there are only three ways to increase sales:
Increase the number of transactions
(make more sales with more individuals.)
Increase the size of each deal
(upsell, cross-sell,
and maximize the potential profit from each sale.)
Increase transaction density
(do all you can to get customers
to buy from you more often
and recommend your products/services to other customers.)
One of the best ways to define a strategy
to achieve a specific goal on the way to your long-term goals is
to make a list of all the things you can do to achieve your sub-goals.
Sort the list you just listed by value and priority.
Decide exactly what you can do
to increase sales in one or more of the ways above.
“Thinking big, dreaming big,
and setting high goals and targets are great,
but unrealistic if you are not disciplined.
All of these targets will turn into failures
if you do not get real with yourself sooner than later.
You are in total control of your success,
start acknowledging that.” – Grant Cardone
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• Plan.
A plan is an organized list of things to do
to accomplish the strategies in the master plan.
All of the most productive people work on a pre-made list.
They are the people who constantly make lists.
Perhaps the best time management tool is a checklist that you create
by writing down all the steps,
in order,
that need to be taken to achieve a short-term goals on the way
to conquering long-term goals.
Once you have this checklist,
you will work on it,
completing each task in turn,
until you reach your larger goal.
“Money seems to flow to those who give it the most attention & take responsibility for it.” – Grant Cardone
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• Action.
There will be activities that you must do every day
to execute your plan,
execute your strategy,
achieve your short-term goals,
and finally conquer your long-term goals.
The more thoughtfully you think about these activities,
the quicker you will achieve better results.
“Money doesn’t buy happiness.
Poverty can’t buy anything.” – Grant Cardone
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Control your actions
The key to sales success is staying in control of your actions.
You’ve identified your annual income goal
and the number of products you need
to sell to earn that amount.
Now break this recipe down into even smaller pieces.
First, what is the average size of your sale?
Good salespeople regularly keep accurate reports
on their business activities.
They can tell you the average size of their sales by month,
by year.
They know very well how much money they make.
They use this information as a baseline
and regularly work to improve their average earnings per trade.
How many products do you need to sell each week,
month,
or year to individual customers
in order to earn the desired annual income?
How many potential customers do you need to meet?
How many people will you need to contact
to get the number of meetings needed with real leads?
You may have to make five, 10,
and even 20 calls to get a meeting with your real prospect.
Always keep accurate reports of these numbers.
How many pitches do you have to make with real leads
to get the number of successful deals you need
to reach your personal income goal?
What is your closing rate,
per meeting,
per offer,
per customer service?
Do you know how many people you need to talk to in the beginning
to get how many appointments,
how many sales pitches,
how many customer service sessions,
thereby making how many deals?
successful and how much money per trade?
By keeping accurate reporting on this issue,
you know the answers to these questions every day,
every week,
every month.
With a well-written plan,
you can make more money in a week
or a month than you could make in a year
or even two years without any plan.
A personal strategic plan places on your shoulders the responsibility
to accomplish and helps you achieve more than you can imagine.
All the best salespeople work with a well-written plan.
And you should too!
Remember:
Every 10 minutes you spend on planning will save you about 10 minutes
in the process of getting important results.
If you spend 10 minutes a day planning,
you will save about 100 minutes a day.
You get paid 10 times what you put in,
or rate of return on invested energy is 1000%.
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Sales funnel
Use the template of a sales funnel to plan your sales activities and activities.
There are a few different parts to a professional sales process,
but there are three of the biggest that we can see,
namely finding,
selling,
customer care,
and closing the deal.
Imagine a funnel that is wide at the top of the mouth
and narrow at the bottom.
Your search is an operation that fills the mouth of the funnel.
You have to put a lot of potential customers into the mouth of the funnel
because only a few of them will move down,
all the way to the bottom of the funnel
and become your actual customers.
The second major part of selling,
and also the second part of the funnel,
is to offer your product/service
as the best possible choice for this particular customer.
(You’ll learn in the next sections
that the place of the sale is the place of the sale.)
There’s a direct ratio
between the number of new leads you talk to
and the number of opportunities you’ll have to offer
to sell its products or services.
In this example,
let’s say you need 20 leads at the top of the funnel
to make five sales in the middle of the funnel.
The third part of the funnel,
the bottom,
is when you take care of the customer
and complete the transaction.
If you had to contact 20 leads to get five sales,
out of those five you could get two real leads to take care of.
With these two customers you can complete a transaction.
In this example,
your sales ratio is 20:1.
Once you’ve determined your current sales rate
– which will vary due to market conditions,
personal experience,
skills,
and other factors
– here’s your strategy:
keep the funnel full.
Continue to search,
offer for sale and care.
And finally, dedicate yourself
to get even better results in each specific section.
“True wealth is not created by saving,
it is created by expanding and investing.” – Grant Cardone
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Key Results Areas
There are seven Key Results Areas in the sales process.
All are necessary for the success of the sale.
Your average score in each of these ranges determines
how much income you can earn.
If you want to lose weight,
the first thing you do is stand on the scale
and see how much you weigh.
This job gives you a “boundary line,”
and it becomes your starting point.
From this baseline you can compare your weight each day.
With the key result areas of your sales work,
the problem is almost the same.
You start by giving yourself a score from 1 to 10
in each of the following areas:
“The only way to get real freedom is to create massive success.” – Grant Cardone
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Search
Build relationships and trust
Identify the problem
Solution presentation
Responding to objections
End of offering
Resell and recommend
The lowest level of proficiency you need
to achieve business success
is a score of seven or more.
As you rate yourself in each of these Key Results Areas, be honest.
You can only improve yourself in a particular area
if you accept that you are not
as strong as you can be in that area.
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1. Search.
If you give it a score from 1 to 10,
how many points is your search skill?
A 10 means you’ve got all the leads you can talk to
and you’ve scheduled meetings with new leads within the next two,
three weeks or even two,
the next three months.
A score of 1 means you don’t have a single lead
and don’t know who you’ll talk to next.
This is the area where it is easiest to evaluate yourself.
A score of 5 means 50% of your time is scheduled
with prior appointments.
A score of 7 means 70% of your time is scheduled
with prior appointments.
If you give it a score from 1 to 10,
how many points is your search skill?
Please write your score here: ___
“Confidence is built by doing the right things, not buying things.” – Grant Cardone
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2. Build relationships and trust.
This is an important part of being successful in sales.
A score of 10 means you’ve successfully made contact
with most of the people you talk to.
You like them and they love you too.
A score of 1 means you clearly don’t like yourself
or your potential customers.
You don’t feel comfortable talking to them,
and you rarely get the chance to meet them a second time.
The good news in building rapport
and trust is that the more you like yourself,
the more you’ll like other people,
and of course,
the more they’ll like you, too.
As with what you’ve done
to improve your confidence
and self-esteem,
set clear goals
and work every day to execute on your plan.
You’ll feel happier
and in control of your life,
you’ll become more positive,
and the people you come in contact with will enjoy yourself
and your sales-related activities of you more.
Do you consider yourself good at creating close
and harmonious relationships with your potential customers
from the first meeting and in subsequent meetings?
Rate yourself and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10.
How many points did you get? ___
“Create an atmosphere of abundance,
so that money is no longer the point.” – Grant Cardone
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3. Identify the problem.
The most important part of the first sales contact,
and in the business relationship you are continuing to develop,
is the ability to clearly
and precisely define what your customers want,
need, and are ready pay
for what utility your product/service provides.
You identify your customer’s needs by asking systematic
and carefully prepared questions in a clear and concise manner.
This series of questions can elicit valuable information
that helps you identify features
and benefits that can help customers improve their lives
or work in the product/service you provide.
If you get a 10 in problem definition,
then you have carefully prepared a series of systematic questions,
from the general to the specific,
to ask your prospect.
By the end of the first conversation,
both you
and the other prospect have a very good understanding
of an existing need
or problem that your product/service can satisfy or solve.
Conversely, if your problem-solving ability is only 1 point,
it is clear that your sales conversation is not prepared at all.
You keep talking nonsense,
indiscriminately,
thinking what to say
and then at the end of the conversation the customer
still cannot understand what you are saying
and why he has to see you again.
How many points do you get in the field of identifying customer problems?
Please rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10: ___
“Success is your duty,
obligation,
and responsibility.” – Grant Cardone
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4. Offer a solution.
This is the area where the majority of trades are made.
A score of 10 for solution ability means
that your offer is executed very smoothly, professionally,
and persuasively so that,
in the end,
your customers are ready
to enjoy the benefits
that they have to offer product/service you are offering to sell
and ready to buy that product/service.
Score 1, on the contrary,
means that your presentation is messy
and unclear at all and,
in the end, your customer can’t find any reason to want
to buy your product/service,
that you are offering and therefore there is no reason
to buy that product/service.
Instead, your customer will say,
“Let me consider it.”
Now give yourself a score.
How many points do you get on a scale of 1 to 10? ___
“If you’re having financial trouble it’s
because you have the wrong information.” – Grant Cardone
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5. Respond to customer objections.
If your ability to respond to objections scores 10,
you’ve thought through all the objections
the smartest prospect could give you,
and you’ve develop a system of clear
and persuasive responses to each objection.
Once you have given a clear
and convincing answer,
the customer will never raise the issue again.
At the bottom of the scorecard,
a score of 1 on your ability to respond
to customer objections means
that every time you hear an objection,
you feel frustrated and extremely depressed.
You become angry and defensive.
You don’t know what you should say
to the customer right now so that you can satisfy them
and reassure them that your product/service is really a good choice.
Are you really capable of responding to objections?
Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10: ___
“Stay away from negative people.
They don’t use their energy to improve their own life,
instead they use it to bring you down.” – Tai Lopez
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6. Closing the offering.
To get 10 points for doing this step,
you’ll need to have a series of conversational closing questions
that you’re prepared to ask at the right time
and in the right way.
You close the conversation calmly and professionally
with the promise of a purchase
or an order from your customer.
You complete the transaction logically
and feel little or no stress.
Conversely, a score of 1 means you don’t know
how to get orders from customers.
By the end of the offer,
you become nervous and confused.
You don’t know what to say or do right now.
How many points do you have in terms of closing the offer?
Please rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10: ___
“My favorite way to make money is while I sleep.” – Tai Lopez
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7. Resale and referrals.
To get 10 points for doing this job,
you need to create a “golden chain” in reselling
to customers who are satisfied with your product/service
and are willing to recommend you
with the people around you.
Your after-sales service should be good
so that customers want
to buy your products/services again
and recommend you to their friends.
Point 1, of course,
means that after buying your product/service once,
the customer never wants to buy again
and therefore will never refer you to anyone again.
Good sales people structure the public
their business with a “referral only” sales goal.
Based on the percentage of transactions completed
by referrals from past customers out of total transactions,
rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 ___
Remember:
When you rate yourself below a 7 in any area,
it indicates that your skill area is making you less confident,
preventing you from realizing your full potential ability,
in terms of sales and income.
“The goal of life is to enjoy your life.
To do something important.” – Tai Lopez
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Your limited skills
In anyone’s sales career
there will be a “limiting factor” to sales success.
It is almost always your weakest area.
Out of the seven key Key Results Areas above,
which one do you give yourself the worst score in?
The answer to this question is extremely important to you.
You may excel in six of the seven Key Results Areas related to sales,
but it is the area where you are weak
that is holding you back from your ability
to sell and make money.
Here’s the important question:
What is the skill that,
if you become truly outstanding,
will have the most positive effect on your sales
as well as your earnings?
This is one of the most important questions you will ask and answer.
What skills can help you the most?
Whatever it is, make it a goal.
Write it down and make a plan
to achieve that goal.
Work on improving yourself in that skill area every day
until you are fully confident and master the skill.
The Key Results Area (KRA) approach presents a comprehensive picture
of the entire sales process.
To identify your weakest areas,
write all seven key result areas on a piece of paper.
When you fail in an offer,
put an X next to the key results area where you feel that
because of this step you are not selling.
After a week, go back
and look at your overall scoreboard.
In the sales process,
which step have you highlighted the most?
That is the bottleneck
– the key skill you are weakest in.
Immediately get back to work
to address that bottleneck
by improving your abilities in this area.
Once you have improved yourself in this key results area,
the next area of weakness will appear.
Continue with the process you just went through:
Put an X next to the key results area
where you think you failed on your latest offering,
work to improve yourself in that area
until you are absolutely brilliant
and comprehensive in the rest of the sales process.
“Increase your attention span.
Your ability to concentrate predicts your long-term success at almost anything.” – Tai Lopez
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ACTION EXERCISES
Here are some questions
that you can apply these ideas to in your sales:
What are the three ways to be the boss of your company?
What are three ways
that you can determine your own income in sales?
What are the three most important activities in sales?
What are three of the characteristics of the top 10%
of the best salespeople in your field?
What are the three areas
that you need to plan ahead every day
to achieve your sales and income goals?
What is the key skill area where you are weakest in sales?
Finally, after what we’ve learned in this chapter,
if there’s one thing you want to do right away,
what would it be?