Selling Successfully When You’re in Over Your Head
You’ve worked very hard to get this opportunity, but this morning, as you looked at yourself in the mirror, the reality of what you are up against really hit home. Maybe it would be better for one of the more experienced account execs to handle this presentation. After all, what makes you think you’re up to this, anyway? You’ve never landed an account even half this size. The conference room you’ll be meeting in will probably be as big as your whole apartment! The prospect’s custom-made suit worth more than all the furniture in your apartment! You feel your planned and rehearsed comments disappearing from memory, your anxiety rising. The face in the mirror says: buddy, it looks like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew!
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Sales professionals perform under pressure all the time. Some people are thwarted by the challenges of instant feedback, possibility of rejection, and compensation directly linked to performance. Some people thrive on these challenges. But even the best salesperson will, from time to time, feel thrust into a situation where he or she is overmatched. Even the best sales pro may be intimidated or fearful of the presentation to the really “big” prospect.
This is just one more thing that sales professionals and athletes share; the need to successfully manage, even to thrive under extraordinary pressure.
Consider the following article from USA Today (8/8/96):
A few days before the Olympic decathlon, Dan O’Brien was in a familiar place, but he knew he couldn’t stay. “Dan admitted he was having trouble sleeping,” sports psychologist Jim Reardon says. “He couldn’t shut his mind down. He was thinking things like: ‘what if I don’t win? What if this happens? What if that happens?’”
In 1992, O’Brien didn’t qualify for the U.S. Olympic team.
So Reardon went into action. “We talked about refocusing,” he says. “We did some progressive muscle relaxation, focused on breathing and replaced negative thoughts with positive thoughts.”
Sports psychology, the art of enhancing mental skills to reach physical goals, is being heralded by athletes as the performance revolution of the 1990’s. . . .
“I’m a much better athlete, much more aware of myself,” O’Brien says. “I know what kind of feelings I’m going through. And I know how to cope with these feelings before they hurt my performance.”
Think about this: sports are physical, very physical, yet athletes are increasingly embracing mental training as the key to success. You may feel that selling is technical, a sequence of steps and applied techniques. But top salespeople are increasingly embracing mental training as their key to success.
In a sense, athletes like Dan O’Brien are “in over their head” every time they compete. The other athletes they face are at least physical equivalents if not superior. The talent level at the very top of every sport, in the amateur and in the pro ranks, is simply awesome. And these people perform in high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it situations constantly, often under the critical scrutiny of thousands, tens of thousands, or—thanks to TV—millions of observers. Think of the “comeback kings” of pro football like Fran Tarkenton or John Elway. How can Elway stay so cool, calm, purposeful and focused with only a few ticks remaining on the clock, the roar of 60,000 people around him, the noise on the field, the rushing defense, and the need to score or be out of the play-offs?
This is what we often call the “money player” in sports. The fellow who can make that million dollar putt and wrestle the tournament championship away from the elder statesmen, the old pros of the game. Or the second-string quarterback who comes off the bench late in the game and can bring a team back from a great point deficit, under pressure of a diminishing clock, time running out, and blitzes by the defenders.
The true money player in sports is able to sustain peak performance even under enormous pressure, even in the most disadvantageous of conditions.
In that same USA Today article, Jason Elam, the Denver Broncos’ all-star place kicker talked about using relaxation and visualization drills to prepare for a game. In 1995, Elam made all 39 of his extra point attempts, 31 of 38 field goal attempts, and scored 132 points. His sports psychologist says that “the vast majority are not using it to solve a problem but to tap into the vast power of the mind to reach higher levels of achievement.”
Would you like to have the calm confidence of an Elway or Elam? I believe this is within reach of every sales professional. You can condition your self-image to make you a “money player” in selling!
Even If You Are “Outclassed,” You Can Still Win
How do you know when you are in over your head? I’m told that racehorses can look each other in the eye and sense “class” differences. Often, the horse of lower class may be fast enough to beat the horse of higher class, may draw up next to him, but will not pass him! Certainly, one group of athletes can look at their own strengths, weaknesses, and statistics and compare themselves to their opponents and tell whether or not they are in over their heads. Does a lower class ever beat a higher class horse? Yes. Not the majority of times, but often enough to invalidate class as a primary handicapping method. Does a technically inferior team ever beat a significantly superior team? Yes. Not the majority of times, but often enough to invalidate superiority-on-paper, statistical comparisons, as the way to predict outcomes of games.
People quite often get in over their heads and still emerge victorious. I have long been fascinated by this; by the individual who is clearly outclassed in some contest, competition or situation, yet rises above that disadvantage and still wins. The self-image of such a person is worthy of study by any sales professional seeking peak performance even in apparently difficult selling situations.
Early in my writing and speaking about Psycho-Cybernetics, I spent some time with a most unusual man. As an entrepreneur, he had taken over a virtually bankrupt, troubled chain of stores and turned them into a giant, thriving retail empire in a few short years. For a while, an article predicting the death of this company or criticizing him as either a brutal axe-wielder, eliminating jobs and ruining lives, or a cutthroat deal-maker appeared in the newspapers just about every day. The bankers all turned their back on this guy, and he had to secure financing from overseas sources. At the same time this man was in the middle of this business storm, his personal life was also in chaos. His wife was divorcing him, it was messy, and the ugly details made their way into the society pages as well as the tabloids. On top of all this, he was also under indictment for securities fraud, related to another business deal. I asked him how he was able to deal with all these problems at the same time and still keep his eye on the ball and get things done.
“I’ve always been the kind of person who can stand up to criticism and crisis. I’m not really bothered by being surrounded by problems and critics. I know I’ll ultimately prevail. My whole life, I’ve been getting truckloads of shit dumped on me and coming out of the pile smelling like a rose.”
I don’t know if he was aware of it or not, but he answered my question with a very clear, powerful, dynamic Self-Image Programming Statement. He described a self-image that just doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of failure. If we look inside your self-image, and see what’s there having to do with crisis or criticism, what would we find?
Consider the Oriental fable about the little tiger orphaned immediately after birth, raised by a friendly herd of goats. The little tiger played with the goat kids, drank milk from the nanny goat, and slept secure in the goat’s cave. Quite naturally, the little fellow came to think of himself as a goat. He did his best to bleat like a goat. He tried to cultivate a taste for grass and paper.
One day a huge Bengal tiger came bounding into the clearing where the little tiger was playing with the goats. As the tiger roared, the goats ran for cover. The little tiger was the only “goat” who didn’t race away. Instead, he felt strangely drawn to the huge, magnificent creature.
The big tiger led the little fellow down the hill to a nearby river and urged him to take a close look at his reflection in the water. Whenever he had looked in the water before, he had seen his reflection as an odd-looking goat, because that was what he expected to see. But now he saw his reflection differently, as a tiger.
The big tiger let out a tree-shaking roar. “Why don’t you roar like that?” “Never tried,” thought the little tiger. He sat back on his haunches like the big tiger did, took a deep breath, and tried to roar. To his surprise, he felt a rumble deep within his stomach. It grew stronger. He opened his mouth wide and the most amazing roar came out, cascading over the jungle. From that day forward he knew he could never be a goat again.
You can be a tiger, not a goat. A lion, not a mouse. Your big self, not your small self. You may never have tried to roar, and that’s all there is to it. If you feel you are in over your head, you probably aren’t. You’ve probably just never tried going there before. Most people have more talent and ability than they give themselves credit for. Go ahead and throw back your head and roar as loudly as you can. You’ll probably surprise yourself!
Why You Should Put Out the Welcome Mat for “Fear”
When you fear an impending selling situation, and feel that you may be in over your head, what is really going on? Such fear is a sign that you are growing and stretching and pushing against your comfort zone, and that is a very healthy and potentially rewarding thing to do. The fear feeling tells you that you are succeeding at getting your instructions to your Servo-Mechanism. The fear feeling is a way your Servo-Mechanism checks an instruction it’s not familiar with; it’s like the Servo-Mechanism saying, “Hey, are you sure you want to do this?”
Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. You must then respond emphatically, definitively, and forcefully: “Yes, that is exactly what I intend to do. You heard me right. Now get that Success Mechanism of ours up, out of bed, give it a cup of coffee, and get it to work.”
You Are Not Your Fears
The fear feeling is a natural, temporary response to unfamiliar and uncomfortable instructions you send to your Servo-Mechanism. But you are separate from your fear; you and your fear feeling are not one in the same. You can honestly acknowledge that you feel fear about doing a particular thing but then go ahead and do it anyway, and most of the time, the fear feeling will be dissolved by the action.
There is an old proverb: “Fear and doubt knocked on the door. Faith and courage answered. There was no one there.”
Every Coin Has Two Sides
In the Batman comic books (and in one of the recent Batman movies), there is a villain called “Two Face.” One side of his face is horribly scarred and disfigured, the other handsome. One side of his personality is evil, dark, twisted and violent; the other decent and compassionate. To determine which side of his personality to let loose in a situation, and decide whether to let an adversary live or die, he flips a two-faced coin.
While this is an interesting character study, Two Face is certainly not a model to emulate. Surely you do not want to leave your personality or the outcome of the day to the flip of a coin! Yet, every one of our self-images does have two faces: the Automatic Success Mechanism (ASM) and the Automatic Failure Mechanism (AFM). You do not need to flip a coin to choose which one to let loose and which one to lock up. The choice should be obvious, and therefore, conscious and deliberate.
Unfortunately, most people go through life letting the ASM or the AFM loose pretty much at random, sometimes provoked by incidents or other people. But rarely, deliberately chosen. Also, in most peoples’ lives, the AFM grows stronger and more dominant with the passage of time.
Given the opportunity, your ASM can be counted on to help you rise up and excel in a high-pressure situation, to find the opportunity concealed in crisis; to be strong, not weak. Conversely, given the opportunity, your AFM can be counted on to sabotage you in high-pressure situations, to be overwhelmed in a crisis; to be weak, not strong.
Picture in your mind two giant light switches mounted on the side of a huge computer: your Servo-Mechanism. One is a red switch, which can turn on or turn off your Failure Mechanism. The other is a green switch, which can turn on or off your Success Mechanism. As you face high-pressure selling situations, here are some tips for flipping the green switch on and the red switch off:
1. Use the Theater of Your Mind. Sit down, get comfortable and replay mental movies of times in your life when you have performed well under pressure. Of times in your career when you have successfully won over an especially tough prospect, closed an especially large or important sale, or otherwise excelled at selling when you felt in over your head. Relive these experiences.
2. Enrich your professional image. Wear your very best business attire and keep it cleaned, pressed, and neat. Dress each morning as if you were going to meet with the President of the United States. Use good business tools, including a quality pen. Carry a quality briefcase. Present a successful outer image to the world at large, so you can present a successful self-image to yourself.
3. Use affirmations. Write out and frequently read or recite strong Self-Image Programming Statements.
4. Use visual psychological triggers to remind yourself of your ambitions and abilities. These can be affirmations written out on large cards, photographs, or objects that have instant meaning to you. A photo of an athlete who performs well under pressure and whom you admire can trigger thoughts of “calm under pressure.” A giant clock might be a trigger for “do it now.”
5. Acquire new skills or fine-tune your present skills. Build competence to build confidence.
6. Prepare. If you are going to meet with Mr. High-tech, a very important prospect, learn what you can about him and his company. If he has been written about in the media, get to the library and read those articles. If he has written a book, read it. If somebody you know well knows him, go or call and get his impressions. Give yourself the edge of understanding as much as you can about the person, his or her business, or industry.
7. Go into the Theater of Your Mind and mentally rehearse the perfect sales presentation. Put the prospect into your movie, script lines and have him or her deliver them, ably respond to questions, establish rapport, and make astute suggestions the prospect is impressed with. Picture him or her growing more enthusiastic as the meeting goes on. See the sale being completed with ease. After you have constructed this scenario, rehearse it over and over again. When the actual meeting rolls around, it’ll feel like deja vu.
8. Do not give your mind time to manufacture undue anxiety. Do not make the mistake of sitting around idle the day before, evening before, or morning of the “big presentation.” Stick to your typical activities. Be productive.
A Look at a Sales Pro in Over His Head
After giving a speech to a big sales group, I was pulled aside by a man who had been sitting in the front row. I had noticed him while giving my speech because he had seemed distracted the entire hour. Now he said, “Dr. Maltz, I really need your advice in private. Can you please give me a few minutes of your time?” We ducked into an unoccupied meeting room next door, found a couple chairs and sat down across from one another.
As you might assume, I later got a call from a triumphant Tom. He had been well received by his very important prospect, delivered a powerful presentation, and secured the account with virtually zero resistance. If Tom ever feels like he is in over his head again, he’ll be able to recall this actual experience and remind his self-image that he is the kind of sales pro who rises to the occasion and performs successfully under pressure.
If you feel in over your head, you can go into the Theater of Your Mind, sit down across from me, and we can have a conversation similar to the one Tom and I had. You see, by the time you’ve finished this book, you’ll understand how I would react and what I would say in just about any situation, so you can make me come and join you for a little coaching session anytime you like.
Why Did You Come Into This World?
Did the miracle of human life occur in your case so that you could someday grow up, face a big and important opportunity, and fail? Of course not! My friend, you came into this world to succeed. I believe that as certainly as I believe in the law of gravity. And if this is so, you can rest assured that you will not be placed face-to-face with an opportunity or challenge too big for you to handle. If you think, even for a second, that you are in over your head, you must remind yourself that you came into this world to succeed and that you are now presented with this situation because you are ready for it.
There is one kind of selling you must never do, and that is: sell yourself short. Dr. Abraham Maslow noted that the history of humankind is rife with people selling themselves short. My own observation is that the history of humankind is full of inspiring instances of men and women of all ages and backgrounds rising up to excel against the apparent odds, to face extraordinary challenges and rise above them to success.
Too many people grow up with the idea that they have come into this world for some purpose other than to succeed at every worthwhile endeavor they apply themselves to—but why? Some people seem to think they were born to suffer, yet this cannot be justified. How perverse would a Creator have to be, to assemble a world as full of opportunity as this, and then place a person in it destined to fail? Some people tell their self-images that they were “born to lose.” Then they are their own perverse creators, condemning themselves to hell on earth.
The truth is that you are never in over your head! You came into this world to succeed. No opportunity appears before you that you are not more than equipped to handle masterfully. No person is your superior. You are unique. Remind yourself of these great truths when you face a challenge in selling and you will rise above it to success!
Mastering Tough Selling Situations
There are a number of critical selling situations in which people often feel they are in over their head. Here are a few ideas on how to handle them.
Multilevel or Network Marketing
Estimates vary, but there seems to be at least 10 million people, roughly 5% of the United States population, and millions more abroad involved in network marketing. Most are part time, with the dual role of selling products to consumers and recruiting, training and motivating others to join the business, who will in turn, sell and recruit. This unusual approach to distributing products and providing opportunities has built a number of giant corporate empires, helped hundreds of thousands of people create substantial incomes with no investment other than effort, and provided a training ground for others, who gain confidence and skills they later use to succeed in other endeavors.
If you are in network marketing, then you already know it falls into the category of “easier said than done.” There are emotional, psychological and practical obstacles to conquer in achieving success in this unusual business.
Todd Smith is a leading distributor in one of these network marketing companies. He has been featured in magazines, interviewed on radio and television, and recognized throughout the network marketing industry for his flair for this business. Last year, his personal income exceeded 1.8 million dollars. That’s enough to get my attention! I buy that Todd understands how to succeed in this type of business.
Todd says that most people who are attracted to network marketing are introverts, not extroverts, so as soon as they’ve used up their “warm market” of family, close friends and neighbors, they begin experiencing great difficulty acquiring additional customers or recruiting more distributors. For most of these people, this is like smacking right up against a brick wall!
This is the reason why most network marketing companies feature highly consumable products, so each person’s cadre of few customers buys again and again. This is also the reason why most network marketing companies’ compensation plans allow a person with only a few personally recruited people to still profit based on the depth—not the breadth—of his or her organization. It also explains these organizations’ increasing preference for using what you might call introverted sales methods, such as handing out or mailing out cassette tapes that tell the sales story for the distributor.
It’s obvious to me, and probably to you, if you’re in one of these businesses, that the introvert could benefit enormously by becoming less so, and becoming more outgoing, assertive and persuasive. If you stop to think about it, each person who joins a network marketing organization brings with him- or herself a self-image that isn’t “up to speed.”
For instance, one day a fellow is a working stiff. He goes to his job every morning, goes through the routine of fastening fasteners on an assembly line or processing paperwork in an office, goes home, eats dinner, and watches TV or plays a game with his children. He probably feels reasonably content with his life. He and his wife get the bills paid, are buying their house, and have pretty much suppressed any youthful dreams of wealth, mansions or travel to exotic ports. His self-image has accepted all that. His self-image is that of an ordinary, average fellow. Now, all of a sudden, a tape plops into his lap or a friend takes him to an “opportunity meeting” and—wham!—his aspirations and goals change overnight. Now he wants a bigger income, a new car, money in the bank, a business of his own, pride, and respect. His self-image hasn’t a chance to catch up. It’s woken abruptly to find this guy attempting to do things it knows he has no business doing.
“What is this all about?” grumbles the self-image. “Hey, you, wait a minute,” it hollers. “What on earth makes you think you’re a salesman? You’ve never sold anything in your life! Heck, your parents had to buy 144 candy bars once when you were supposed to be selling them to raise money for a band trip in high school.”
Maybe this fellow defies his self-image and makes a sale or two.
“Whoa,” yells his self-image. “Don’t you remember being told not to talk to strangers? You got by with this sales thing with your friends because they felt obligated to buy from you. But you’d better not try this with strangers. They’ll laugh you right out of the room.”
Then there’s recruiting. “You manage and motivate somebody?” snorts the self-image. “What gall you’ve got. Are you crazy? What gives you the right to tell anybody else how they ought to live their life? To tell them how to be successful? Let’s look at your bank account. Who’s kidding who? Look, let me protect you from certain humiliation and disappointment.”
Some people, through sheer force of enthusiasm, and the pushing of the person who brought them into the business, may even go against the self-image’s arguing, recruit a few people, and even have a bit of success. But that worried, skeptical self-image will be standing there, feet dug in, pulling backwards, trying as hard as it can to drag that person back to safety. And the first time a thing or two goes wrong—snap!—the self-image will pull you back.
Now here’s my point, and it’s a simple one: you cannot outperform your self-image for very long, and neither can distributors you bring into your organization. If you are to succeed in network marketing, you must go to work strengthening your self-image and rushing it into shape to meet the challenges of this particular activity. If you are to help the people you recruit achieve success, you’ve got to get them on a self-image strengthening program too.
What are the requirements of this job? You have to see yourself as the success you are becoming rather than as the person you’ve been in the past. You have to be able to communicate clearly and persuade confidently. You have to develop a leader’s persona. We are talking about nothing less than a transformation in the way you think, talk, act, and invest your time.
A person who has the habit of pessimism, selling him- or herself and others short, joining with others in complaining about how unfair life is, and going home everyday, plopping down on the couch, and saying “I’m whipped” is going to need a total attitude and behavior makeover! He or she must learn, desire, and cultivate the habit of optimism, and must see talent within when no one else sees it, along with talent in others that even they do not see in themselves. He/she must focus on opportunity instead of inequity. And after a full day’s work at the factory, office or store, this person must rush home, quickly re-energize, and begin coaching distributors by phone or get dressed and go to a meeting.
Let me mention another challenge. Actually I have mentioned it, but let me now highlight it. You need confidence and the courage of your convictions more in this business than in most. Here, you will be telling others what to do to be successful when, in reality, you may not yet have success of your own to back up your advice. You must borrow your unshakable conviction from others who are highly successful in your business.
Now that I have told you of these difficulties, let me assure you that the fundamentals of Psycho-Cybernetics can help you conquer them all!
You will become the successful distributor in the Theater of Your Mind before you become that success in real life, and that is how you will reprogram your self-image. Because success breeds success, and because synthetic success is just as powerful as actual success in affecting the self-image, you will find it very helpful to “ingest” as much success as you can. By that I mean, listening to the tapes recorded by people who are successful in your business, reading the books they have written, attending the seminars they present, and not just casually observing but seriously studying how they handle themselves and respond to others. Imprint what they do and how they do it into your own subconscious mind, then see yourself doing those same things that same way, in your own mental movies.
What about leadership? Are you a leader? There’s an old saying that it is difficult to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny sitting on a horse. This is another way of pointing out that the self-image must be up to the task. It’s my observation that just about everybody has leadership qualities waiting to be awakened. I’m sure that you do too.
I have a somewhat self-serving suggestion: Each time you recruit a new person into your organization, either give him or her the book Psycho-Cybernetics as a gift or encourage him/her to go to a bookstore, buy it and read it. Each time you get a person interested in the workings of the Automatic Success Mechanism, you significantly enhance the likelihood of his or her success. If you can get that person to read this book too, so much the better.
Beyond this, understand that, to a great degree, your leadership role in network marketing can be summarized as installing belief. It is your job to install belief in that new person’s subconscious mind; belief in your products, opportunity, company, and leadership. Of course, you must have it to give it.
Let me introduce you to one of the most successful beliefinstallers I’ve ever encountered. Jason Boreyko is the president of a young, fast-growing network marketing company, New Vision International. This company has gone from zero to over a quarter of a billion dollars in sales in less than 3 years. It’s now the third largest of 2,000 companies in its industry. A bottle of their liquid mineral tonic is sold every four seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. An amazing success story. But when you meet and talk with Jason, there’s no mystery to this success. Jason has an abundance of belief in himself, his products, his company, and his industry. He has an abundance of belief to transfer to others. If you examine the sources of his confidence, you’ll discover the following.
First, Jason was raised by very optimistic, encouraging parents. His father and mother were successful in network marketing.
Jason’s mother preached the gospel of big dreams, and his father taught that, with integrity, vision, hard work and teamwork, anything was possible. Of course, not everybody has the benefit of such an upbringing. But if you cannot recall having heard these things from your parents, it’s never too late to seek out other authority figures to say these things to you now. The library is full of biographies, autobiographies and how-to books by and about successful, inspiring people who will tell you these same things about yourself and about life. You can create a “success environment” for yourself, beginning today.
Second, Jason had his share of hard knocks and learned from them that he is an individual of strength. He did not take to network marketing like a duck to water. For a while, he turned his back on the whole thing and worked at different, unchallenging jobs. When he did return to network marketing, he struggled and failed as a distributor with four different companies. When he, his brother and his Dad all built hugely successful distributorships with one company, giving them a combined income of over $350,000 a month, they had the rug pulled out from underneath them; the company abruptly went bankrupt. Their income stopped in a heartbeat.
Instead of being paralyzed by “Oh poor me . . . why me? . . . it’s not fair!” or by depression, or fear, Jason and his brother sat down, evaluated what had gone wrong, put forward their own ideas about how to build the ideal network marketing company, and set out to do just that with New Vision. My point here is that your past disappointments and failures should have value to you. You haven’t died from them. You haven’t curled up into a ball and stayed there. If you will think about it, you, too, are a person with strength and resiliency inside, waiting to be called on and used to achieve greatness with the right opportunity.
Third, Jason has a mission. His mother died of cancer at a relatively young age, and the country’s best and most expensive doctors could only stand by impotently. Jason is convinced that cancer, and other diseases, can be prevented with natural substances, nutrition, minerals and diet. He is inspired to spread this message. His mother’s untimely death motivates him every day. This “missionary zeal” lifts up the self-image and strengthens its immune system against discouragement or criticism.
People in prevention-type businesses, such as home security systems, fire safety systems, insurance or, for business, theft control services, safety products, asset protection, and so on, often talk about “The Other Guy Syndrome.” This is what stops these salespeople in their tracks; individuals’ profound belief that disasters only happen to “the other guy.”
Some years ago, I had an opportunity to visit with a man making over $200,000 a year selling fire alarm systems to homeowners. At the time, he outperformed the second most successful salesperson in his company by a four-times margin. He admitted that his was a very difficult business, and that it was rare for a day to pass without his questioning the wisdom of staying in it versus finding an easier product to sell. As you might imagine, my curiosity was sparked by that. And my short conversation with him reveals everything you need to know about thriving in this kind of tough selling environment.
Selling Big Ticket Items
One man I know sells multiyear, comprehensive practice management services to dentists. His average sale is $32,000. He told me that the first time he had to get his lips around that number and ask a dentist to sign on the dotted line, he had to hold his breath, afraid of what the doctor’s reaction would be. He has gone on to become one of the most relaxed, confident “big ticket” sales professionals I’ve ever met, and he routinely earns over $250,000 a year as a result.
Another woman I know, a financial planner and investment broker who works for a developer of planned communities, sells investments of $50,000 to $500,000. She told me that no one in her family had ever accumulated $50,000 in their entire lives, let alone put that princely sum into a single investment. She had to reprogram her self-image to do it. The last I heard from her, she had sold an eight-million dollar project in a record five weeks.
Several of my co-authors sell very expensive consulting services, often asking a client for $15,000 to ten times that much, thousands of dollars for just one day of advice-giving. Imagine asking clients for $500, $700, $1,000 an hour? My colleagues do it without blinking.
I’ve also known a number of salespeople who tried to step up to big-ticket selling and choked. Why should the dollar amount of the sale be a problem? Actually, there are many reasons. But they all link to the state of the self-image.
There’s guilt. Guilt at taking so much money from somebody. Guilt at making such a big commission from a single sale, from a single day’s work. Guilt because the salesperson is not so thoroughly convinced of the value that the price is tiny by comparison, though big by most other standards.
There are preconceived beliefs about what other people can afford. Many salespeople know that paying their price may present a financial hardship to the customer, and cannot bring themselves to ask anybody to make such a sacrifice. Can you see how these are all self-image issues?
I know a chiropractor who gets over half of all of his new patients to prepay for months of care, prescribed as a “package.” His average prepay case is $6,000. I said to him that $6,000 was a lot of money for most families.
“Yes,” he said, “I suppose it is. But I know that when they make this kind of a financial commitment, they are much more likely to follow through on every single one of my recommendations, adhere to their treatment and self-care programs, and regain their health. And what can be more important than their health? So if they have to give up cable TV, movies, a vacation or take out a loan to make this commitment, that doesn’t bother me one bit. I know that they and I are doing the right thing.”
Let me add that I know a great many very fine chiropractors who would never dare sit across their desks from new patients and ask them to write out $6,000 checks. Some of them criticize this doctor. They do not like him “selling” his patients these treatment programs. They call it unprofessional. But I know the true reason they disapprove and do not do what he does, even though they’d love to have the result he has; a million dollar a year practice.
I don’t know if I’ve hit on your particular “extra tough” selling situation in this chapter or not. I do know that just about any salesperson has within everything necessary to excel in any extra tough selling environment. Your self-image is incredibly flexible, generous and capable. Whatever you sincerely ask of it, you can become.