The Psychology of Selling

• Instead of using a speech or clever one-liners to get attention or to overcome resistance, he asked logical questions.
• I rehearsed and practiced the best sentences and phrases from the best sales people until I could recite them in my sleep.
• If you do what other successful people do, over and over again, nothing in the world can stop you from eventually getting the same results that they do.
• Visualize this thing that you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint, and begin to build.
• By becoming excellent in sales, you can accomplish any financial goal you set.
• Small differences in ability can lead to enormous differences in results. The difference between the top performers and the average or mediocre performers is not a huge difference in talent or ability. Often, it is just a few small things done consistently and well over and over again.
• If you want to know how tall a building is going to be, you look at how deep they dig the foundation for that building.
• The deeper foundation of knowledge, the greater the life you will be able to build.
• You can never earn more on the outside than you can on the inside. It is almost as if you have an income-thermostat that determines your financial temperature.
• Picture having all the money you will ever need and only making sales calls because you enjoy meeting new people. The calm, confident attitude, as if you were already a wealthy person, will help you perform at your very best, with much less tension.
• The better you get in any area, the more positive your self-concept becomes in that area. The more confidence you have in your ability, the happier you feel when you are doing that part of your job, and the better results you will get.
• Every single step that you take to improve in any area raises your self-confidence and increases your likelihood of success each time you try it.
• Your self-concept is largely subjective. It is not based on reality. It is based solely on the ideas or thoughts that you have about yourself, especially the self-limiting opinions that hold most people back.
• Fear and self-doubt have always been the greatest enemies of human potential.
• Your self-limiting beliefs are usually based on erroneous information. They are not based on fact or reality. Because they are unreal, you can get rid of them by replacing them with new, positive beliefs of confidence and competence in any area.
• The more you like yourself, the more you like other people. The more you like other people, the more they like you in return.
• High self-esteem people set higher standards for themselves and practice higher levels of self-discipline.
• You become what you think about most of the time.
• Successful people control their inner dialogues.
• You do everything, including selling better, when you have a high level of self-generated self-esteem.
• Your level of self-confidence and calmness has a strong impact on the person you are talking to. Positive self-talk leads to positive sales results.
• Reduce the customer’s fear to the point where he has no hesitation about going ahead with your offer.
• If you had no fear of rejection and were guaranteed a high level of success, you would be calling on prospects every single waking moment.
• So will; some won’t; so what? Next!
• There is a direct relationship between your self-esteem and how much money you earn.
• Customers will only buy from people they like (friendship factor).
• Win people over to your side by making it clear that you care about them and want the best for them.
• Your personality is healthy to the degree to which you can get along with the greatest number of different types of people.
• When people feel that someone genuinely likes them, they are more open to listening to that person and to buying what he is selling.
• The primary emotion in sales success is enthusiasm. One of the best definitions of a sale is “ a transfer of enthusiasm.”
• When your emotional commitment and belief in the goodness of what you are selling transfers into the mind of the prospect or customer, all hesitation to buy disappears.
• Decide now that you will not give up; you will be mentally prepared to bounce back from failure and rejection.
• The very act of resolving to persist until you succeed changes your personality and makes you a stronger and more powerful person.
• Tip salespeople are intensely goal oriented. They have clear plans about what they are going to do with the money they earn.
• If you are not absolutely clear about your earnings target, your sales activity will be unfocused.
• Once you program a goal into your subconscious mind, it continually motivates you into taking the actions necessary to achieve it.
• If you have fifty or one hundred reasons for increasing your sales and your income, you will become virtually unstoppable. The more reasons you have, the greater will be the intensity of your desire, like a roaring furnace. The more you want it; the more guaranteed it is that you will do whatever it takes to achieve it.
• All improvement in life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures.
• When you take full control of your conscious mind and discipline yourself to think and talk about only the things you want, you send clear commands to your subconscious mind to give you the thoughts, words, and actions that will make you successful.
• People buy for their reasons, not for yours.
• Every human is aimed at an improvement of some kind.
• Whenever someone considers making a purchase, he or she thinks about how other people may respond to that purchase decision. No one wants to be criticized.
• The prospect does not care what your product is. He only cares about what your product or service will do for him. Every customer’s favorite radio station is WII-FM, “What’s in it for me?”
• Your choice of questions is often the key to identifying needs correctly.
• People are motivated by desire for gain and fear of loss.
• Fear of loss is 2.5 times more powerful than the desire of gain. People are much more motivated to buy if they feel they are going to lose something by not buying than they are in anticipation of the benefits they will enjoy if they do buy.
• Your job is to raise your credibility to the point at which the customer will have not reluctance in going ahead.
• Whenever you can link your product or service to making or saving money for the customer, you will have his total attention.
• Money is hard and cold, the need for security is warm and personal.
• People buy because of the way they anticipate feeling as a result of owning and using your product or service.
• It’s not the features or benefits of your product, it’s the felling of pleasure or fulfillment that the customer imagines he or she will enjoy.
• Anytime you can show a customer that he or she can be safer and more secure as a result of owning your product or service, you can create buying desire.
• How does your product or service increase the amount that your prospect is liked and respected by others?
• When you can structure your product offering to enhance the status, respect, and prestige or another person, you can touch on this deep human need and can often trigger a buying desire.
• When you promote your product or service as something that can help people reach even greater heights of personal success and self-realization, you again generate a desire to purchase.
• The rule is that people decide emotionally and then justify logically. The stronger emotion will always win out over the weaker emotion.
• Everything you do that lowers the fear of making a mistake, or loss, moves you toward the sale as well.
• Always focus on greater value rather than lower price.
• You must always talk about your product or service in terms of what the customer wants, not in terms of what you are selling.
• Question skillfully and listen carefully. The very best salespeople dominate the listening and let the customer dominate the talking.
• Ask open-ended questions, not yes or no questions.
• The person who asks the questions is in control.
• Today, people do not want to be sold.  See yourself as more of a consultant or advisor, not a salesman.
• When you approach every sales situation as a friend, you will dramatically lower the stress involved in competitive selling.
• The way you appear and behave is a critical factor in the buying decision. It satisfies the prospect’s need for assurance.
• The more the spotlight is on him, the greater the possibility that you will make a sale. Don’t talk about yourself.
• The more you believe yourself to be creative, the more you will generate creative ideas. In selling, you are essentially creating business where no business existed before.
• Prospects have automatic buying resistance.
• You must be able to answer the “attractive features questions” in your own mind before you get face-to-face with a customer.
• Customers do not buy features; they only buy benefits. They do not buy products or services; they buy solutions to their problems.
• Fish for whales, not minnows.
• In the first two months after I started using testimonial letters, I made more sales than I had in the previous year. Those kinds of letters are worth their weight in gold.
• 85% of all sales take place only after someone has said that the product or service is good.
• The first fifteen to twenty-five words out of your mouth set the tone for the rest of the conversation.
• When the prospect agrees to meet with you at a specific time, you have made your first sale; the sale makes the real sale possible.
• You do not sell a product or service. You sell a solution to a problem or the satisfaction of a genuine need.
• The prospect want to be assured that your visit will be short.
• People respond automatically to questions.
• Never expect people to call you back, no matter how honest or intelligent they sound.
• Create a picture in your mind of the prospect responding to you positively.
• No one buys a product or service standing up. Refuse to sell it that way.
• They only buy after they have evaluated, reviewed, and decided that the benefits you offer are worth more than the price you charge.
• The suggestive influence of a calm, confident, relaxed salesperson is very powerful.
• You can control your attitude, making sure that it is upbeat and confident, by using the mental rehearsal techniques already mentioned.
• You clothes have a strong subconscious influence on the prospect.
• A person will not buy form you until he is convinced that you are his friend and acting in his best interest.
• The first unspoken question a customer asks when he meets you for the first time is “Do you care about me?”
• People who work form a clean desk are two or three times as productive as those who work from a cluttered desk.
• The more time you spend asking your patient, logical, intelligent, and well-organizes questions, the more he feels that he is in the presence of a professional.
• Move fast, as if you have place to go and people to see.
• Many sales are delayed far longer than they need to be because salespeople are reluctant to ask for the order and bring the transaction to a close.
• The bottom 80% of salespeople simply says whatever comes out of their mouths when they meet with customers.
• Imagine that your eyes are sun lamps and you want to give your prospects face a tan.
• The more a prospect talks and moves in a sales presentation, the more likely it is that he will agree to buy at the end of your presentation.
• Your job is to create as many exciting pictures a as possible to the customer benefiting from what you sell.
• The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
• Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

Source: The Psychology of Selling By: Brian Tracy