“Sell or be sold” takes a sledgehammer to selling. Grant Cardone argues that selling is an essential life skill. If you can sell, you will eat. If there would be no sales, there would be no business (marketers take note!). Which makes you wonder why selling is so seldom taught at universities around the world.
Are you selling enough?
Sledgehammer
More and more of our clients are asking us to help in solving their sales problem. There are over a million books on Amazon with sales in the title. Everyone has their favourite. They all agree that you have to have focus and taking a sledgehammer is certainly one way of doing that.
10,000 hours
Cardone’s take is Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. You can only be good at sales if you commit to becoming a professional. Lots of hours should be spent on training, testing, trying, failing, succeeding, learning. How much time have you spent on learning how to sell?
Love is all
He believes that you have to LOVE what you are selling. You have to be utterly convinced that your product or service is the best. SO much so that not selling to the prospect is doing him or her a disservice. For Army Rangers to complete a mission they are convinced and committed and as a result are capable of unbelievable things.
Be a PRO in selling
You should be a PRO and you should be in control. Not selling is your fault. Not the product, not the client. You and you alone.
His tips
- Always agree with the client
- Always put things on paper
- Credibility is everything
- Give clients you complete and undiluted attention
- Service is senior to selling
- Follow up
- PMA (Positive Mental Attitude)
- Competition is for sissies (dominate)
- If you want a bigger paycheck, get a bigger attitude
- Lack of consistency always boils down to lack of real discipline
Massive action
My favourite is “take massive action”. To quote straight from the book;
“Throw a pebble in a pond and it creates ever-widening ripples. Pound the pond with mortar round after mortar round and then follow up with more mortar rounds, and you’ll create a massive lake. Everyone around will come to see what you’re doing”
And he finishes where he starts.
Would you rather depend on the board of directors, CEO or social welfare, or would you rather rely on your ability to sell?
What are the lesson for business?
- You are probably not taking sales seriously enough and you are not investing enough in the skills need to become a PRO
- If not all of your staff are using your product, they are not believing and are not committed.
- Clients should have your undivided attention. Xtreme customer care is the name of the game
- If you are not taking massive action, you are wasting your time.
