7 Skills of Elite Sales Professionals – Yours for the Taking
I’ve spent 3 decades studying top sales professionals, and the last 15 years training sales people from a broad cross-section of industries and measuring the results they’ve achieved. There’s a very clear picture of what aspiring professionals need to master if they, also, are to gain control of their income.
IRRESISTIBLE RAPPORT
Sales people used to be taught matching and mirroring, but in fact that’s just a little shred of true rapport. The ideal sales people build incredible rapport very rapidly, even with people who don’t particularly like them initially.
Most of the on the web dating gurus don’t even know this material and let’s hope they never find out!
It probably wouldn’t do much good anyway, because they’d use it to try to manipulate, and manipulation is an automatic rapport breaker. To achieve the results you really want, these rapport skills must be used to enhance your relationships so that your level of connection with people is deep and genuine.
How can you gain those deeper rapport skills? Of course you’re not going to develop them overnight, but you certainly can develop them very quickly with practice. Have you ever seen the rapport building exercise that the synchronised swimming teams do before each performance?
Notice how they not only match their breathing, but they use eye contact to match their internal states? Sounds a bit “woo-woo”, I know, but it does work!
MIND READER EXTRAORDINAIRE!
Deep rapport is one thing, but the capability to really know what’s going on in your client’s mind takes it to another level altogether.
These days you can use slicing edge accelerated learning techniques to move you toward a say of deep competence as swiftly as possible, so that you learn to appreciate what your clients are thinking even before they realise it themselves.
How would you like to know for sure which option your client wants, what they think of each and every thing you state, when is the exact right moment to wrap up the sale? Would this be useful to you?
To gain mind reading skills to this degree of usefulness you’ll need to practice with a group of friends or business associates. Have each person think of, for example, things that they like very much, and things that they dislike very much, and see if you can tell the difference. Do this with as many people as you can, and you’ll soon be able to pick up much more subtle cues, even with people who are complete strangers to you.
CLIENT TRAITS THAT YOU MUST KNOW IN ORDER TO MAKE SALES!
Although psychologists would clearly disagree in terms of personality traits that impact on mental health, unless you’re a therapist the ONLY personality traits that are of concern to you are those that impact on motivation and decision making.
It might surprise you, but once you’ve studied that collection of traits, you’ll find you’ve got a natural affinity with them. In fact if you bring to mind even casual acquaintances, you’ll find that you can now identify those traits IMMEDIATELY.
I’m going to give you an example of one of these traits and it’s called by several names, one of which is “similarity/difference”. You’ll soon see why.
Have you ever met anyone who, the minute you stated “black”, they stated “white”? If you said it was a fine day, they’ve declared that indeed it was a pretty ordinary day, or even “what’s fine about it!”. That was probably a person who focuses on the differences, or habitually mismatches. Sometimes we refer to this type of person as a “polarity responder”, which is a technical term meaning “pain in the butt” 
.
On the other hand, there’s that equally maddening person who’s constantly focussing on the things that are similar or in common, rather than on things that are different or even “new”. This type of thinking can be quite counter-productive for a student, for example, because instead of recognising new knowledge, they will discount it by saying something like “Oh yes, this is just like X, and I learned that last year!” They totally miss out on the differences, especially the subtle ones, and therefore fail to learn as well as they could.
Real Life Example
Let’s say Fred the sales professional is visiting Macy the general manager and Macy seems “disagreeable”. First she explains a problem on the manufacturing line, but when Fred repeats her statement later, she denies there’s a problem! Macey is such an extreme mismatcher that she even mismatches her own statements. (Christine’s note: as hard as it might be to believe, such extreme mismatchers do exist. They’re rare, but they do exist!)
Fred, realising that a mismatcher is one of the easiest people to influence (if you can be bothered), merely says, “Macey, I don’t know that you’d agree with me that there could be a superior way to run that process, but I wonder if you wouldn’t find it easier to “
And he has the ability to continue: “Macey, this option isn’t for everyone and it might not suit you in this case ….”. In fact Macey is probably the easiest client anyone could possibly sell to providing you comprehend her and respond to her the way that she requires. When you comprehend all the personality traits, you won’t make those relating mistakes again because you’ll be working in line with your client’s “style”.
MILLION DOLLAR QUESTIONS
The top performing sales people are experts at asking 3 easy little questions and using the answers effectively.
Why are these easy little questions so valuable? Because they highlight not only the core values that the client is using to decide whether your product or service meets their needs, but even the very words the client needs to hear in order to decide to buy!
These questions are pure gold. They make buy utterly compelling, and at the same time build a great relationship that fosters streams of referrals!
HOW TO HAVE ABSOLUTE CONTROL OVER YOUR SALES INCOME
Are you confident at the moment of hitting any sales goal you select?
Top sales professionals certainly can and do, because they know the easy statistics that matter to every sales person, and they can turn them into a mathematical equation that literally gives them fingertip control of your income.
So far as I’m aware, Frank Bettger was the first professional sales person to formulate and use this mathematical equation to literally choose his income. Even though selling activities have changed, and the skills I’ve discussed certainly increase effectiveness over older methods, the mathematical equation still holds.
You can calculate your own equation by making a list of all your direct and indirect selling activities along with the time it takes to perform “one unit” of each activity. That’s what’s leading to your current sales level. So you’ve your equation. However most people can improve that dramatically by eliminating or reducing activities that aren’t paying their way, and implementing others that are more effective. In all my years of sales training, I haven’t yet met a single sales person on commission who couldn’t at least double their income within 90 days of implementation of this method.
For this equation to work for you, you have to be prepared to plan, document, track and analyse each activity or it just won’t happen because you’ll still be flying blind. However if you do this, then I completely know you’re going to be successful beyond your dreams.
ABRACADABRA! FEAR OR DOUBT GONE!
Have you ever known what you had to do, and certainly been capable of doing it very well, and yet you procrastinated or self-sabotaged so it still didn’t get done? This is what fear or niggling doubt can do, so obviously it needs to go!
What if you know you should feel confident about making those calls or talking in front of that group, but you still feel sick in the stomach every time you consider it?
A fast and simple way to eliminate these problems has been available for several years now, but only a few especially-skilled therapists know about it.
It’s a technique called “NeuroStim” and it’s so effective that it’s been tested in clinical trials to eliminate depression and even severe chronic pain in just days. Permanently. It’ll make mince meat of your performance anxiety!
YOUR PAYOFF FOR NETWORKING STRATEGICALLY!
In the old days we always recommended that our clients and students join a business networking organisation in order to build relationships that would benefit them personally and professionally. We toiled conscientiously and for years to instruct a philosophy and methodology that we knew worked.
Sadly, we don’t see any evidence at all that the organisations understand the principles of effective business networking.
Nowadays we advise our clients and students to avoid these organisations whenever possible. They are half-baked examples of what networking should be about and our people are far better off forming their own business networks among trusted business friends. If they do this the right way, they’ll enjoy unprecedented success, including better peer-mentoring, joint venture agreements, referrals, advocacy, and sharing of expertise and resources. And they can do it all in business hours.
The advantages of turning your back on the networking organisations and building your own private network are gigantic. You’ll save time, money and effort, and you no longer have to tolerate boring or rude networking practices. You’ll no longer rob yourself, family or friends of time that should be spent with them. You’ll have REAL friends in business who enrich your life personally and professionally.
COULD YOU DO IT TOO?
Even though there is always more to learn, especially in terms of communication skills, if you can only do the 7 things I’ve discussed here, you’ll totally achieve your dreams, and you will have earned them!
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