Identifying Top Salespeople

Here’s a key point. A higher order value always takes precedence over a lower order value. If you place one value higher than another, and you have to choose between doing one thing or doing another, you will always select the action that is consistent with your higher value.

Once you are clear about your order of values, decision making becomes much easier. How can you determine what your values really are? Simple. Just observe your behaviors, especially the things you do when you are under pressure.

Your values are always expressed in your actions. It is not what you say, or wish, or hope, or intend that expresses your true values. It is only what you do. If you want to know what your values are at this moment, you can examine your recent past and notice the choices you made when you could have gone one way or another.

Your choices, and your subsequent actions, demonstrated to yourself and others what was of greatest value and importance to you. Here is an example. Imagine you have two people who have the same three values.

The values are family, health and career success. The only difference between these two people is the order of importance that they placed on these values, their priorities. The first person, Bill, says that, “My family comes first, my health is second and career success is third.” Tom, on the other hand, has the same values, but he says, “Career success comes first for me, then my family, and then my health.”

Would there be a difference in character and personality between these two people? Would there be a small difference or a large difference? Which of these two people would you like to get to know and become friends with? Would you be able to tell these two people apart in conversation? Which one do you think you would like and trust more?

The answers to these questions are clear. The person with the higher values in a better order of priority will invariably be a better person than the person whose values are in a different order. Your choice of values determines the quality of your character.

When you select values such as integrity, love, courage, honesty, excellence or responsibility, and you live your life consistent with those values, every hour of every day, you actually become a superior person.

It is your values that determine the kind of person you really are. Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, think about how you behave, how you choose, whenever you are under pressure. Remember, it is only what you do, your actions, that tell who you really are.

Second, observe how other people around you behave when they are forced to choose. You will only be compatible with people whose values are similar to yours.

What are they?

Exercising Your Influence

Persuasion power can help you get more of the things you want faster than anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure. It can guarantee your progress and enable you to use all of your other skills and abilities at the very highest level. Your persuasion power will earn you the support and respect of your customers, bosses, coworkers, colleagues and friends. The ability to persuade others to do what you want them to do can make you one of the most important people in your community.

Fortunately, persuasion is a skill, like riding a bicycle, that you can learn through study and practice. Your job is to become absolutely excellent at influencing and motivating others to support and assist you in the achievement of your goals and the solving of your problems.

You can either persuade others to help you or be persuaded to help them. It is one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction involves a complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they are usually the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are doing the persuading.

The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by something. Your job is to find out what motivates other people and then to provide that motivation. People have two major motivations: the desire for gain and the fear of loss. The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the things they value in life. They want more money, more success, more health, more influence, more respect, more love and more happiness. Human wants are limited only by individual imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still wants more and more. When you can show a person how he or she can get more of the things he or she wants by helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate them to act in your behalf.

President Eisenhower once said that, “Persuasion is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do, and to like it.” You need always to be thinking about how you can get people to want to do the things that you need them to do to attain your objectives. People are also motivated to act by the fear of loss. This fear, in all its various forms, is often stronger than the desire for gain. People fear financial loss, loss of health, anger or disapproval of others, loss of the love of someone and the loss of anything they have worked hard to accomplish. They fear change, risk and uncertainty because these threaten them with potential losses.

Whenever you can show a person that, by doing what you want them to do, they can avoid a loss of some kind, you can influence them to take a particular action. The very best appeals are those where you offer an opportunity to gain and an opportunity to avoid loss at the same time.

There are two ways to get the things you want in life. First, you can work by yourself and for yourself in your own best interest. You can be a “Robinson Crusoe” of modern life, relying on yourself for the satisfaction of your needs. By doing this, you can accomplish a little, but not a lot. The person who looks to himself or herself completely is limited in his or her capacities. He or she will never be rich or successful.

The second way to get the things you want is by gaining and using leverage. Leverage allows you to multiply yourself and get far more out of the hours you put in rather than doing everything yourself. There are three forms of leverage you must develop to fulfill your full potential in our society: other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge, and other people’s money.

You leverage yourself through other people’s efforts by getting other people to work with you and for you in the accomplishment of your objectives. Sometimes you can ask them to help you voluntarily, although people won’t work for very long without some personal reward. At other times you can hire them to help you, thereby freeing you up to do higher-value work.

One of the most important laws of economics is called “Ricardo’s Law.” It is also called the Law of Comparative Advantage. This law states that when someone can accomplish a part of your task at a lower hourly rate than you would earn for accomplishing more valuable parts of your task, you should delegate or outsource that part of the task.

For example, if you want to earn $100,000 a year, in a 250 day year, you need to make $50.00 per hour. That means you must be doing work that is worth $50.00 per hour, eight hours per day, 250 days per year. Therefore, if there is any part of your work, like making photocopies, filing information, typing letters, or filling out expense forms, that is not valued at $50.00 per hour, you should stop doing it. You should persuade someone else who works at a lower hourly rate to do it for you. The more lower level tasks you can persuade others to do, the more time you will have to do tasks that pay you higher amounts of money. This is one of the essential keys to getting the leverage you need to become one of the higher paid people in your profession.

Management can be defined as “getting things done through others.” To be a manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they persuade them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and agreed-upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he or she has a vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.

In every part of your life, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job with the same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal persuasion. It may seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves you an enormous amount of time in the completion of the task.

The second form of leverage that you must develop for success in America is other people’s knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many other people if you want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are not those who know everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more often than not, they are people who know how to find the knowledge they need.

What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals? Of the knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to control your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy, or rent from others?

It has been said that, in our information-based society, you are never more than one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge in the country. With on-line computer services that access huge data bases all over the country, you can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by using a personal computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from another person in order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade them to help you is to ask them for their assistance.

Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them and motivate them to want to help you. So don’t be afraid to ask, even if you don’t know the individual personally.

The third key to leverage, which is very much based on your persuasive abilities, is other people’s money. Your ability to use other people’s money and resources to leverage your talents is the key to financial success. Your ability to buy and defer payment, to sell and collect payment in advance, to borrow, rent or lease furniture, fixtures and machinery, and to borrow money from people to help you multiply your opportunities is one of the most important of all skills that you can develop. And these all depend on your ability to persuade others to cooperate with you financially so that you can develop the leverage you need to move onward and upward in your field.

There are four “Ps” that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both your work and personal life. They are power, positioning, performance, and politeness. And they are all based on perception. The first “P” is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives that you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will be persuaded by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you appear to be a senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more likely to help you and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be a lower level employee.

The second “P” is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the mind and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being influenced by you.

In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how you could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in such a way that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve your goals.

The third “P” is performance. This refers to your level of competence and expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability to get results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only does an average job. The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an extremely persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people around you. They will accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree with your requests.

The fourth “P” of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you. They are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and accomplish your goals. Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest of all subconscious needs, the need to feel important and respected. Whenever you convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your treatment of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and influenced by you in almost anything you need.

Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change their perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you change the things that they will do for you.

You can become an expert at personal persuasion. You can develop your personal power by always remembering that there are only two ways to get the things you want in life, you can do it all yourself, or you can get most of it done by others. Your ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, influence, delegate and interact effectively with other people will enable you to develop leverage using other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge and other people’s money. The development of your persuasion power will enable you to become one of the most powerful and influential people in your organization. It will open up doors for you in every area of your life.

Everyone’s a Salesperson

Sometimes I ask my seminar attendees, “How many people here are in sales?” It’s interesting to watch how people respond to that question. There are always a few people who will raise a hand at first, and then another hand goes up, and then another, and soon perhaps half the people in the room have a hand up, even though they may be in fields such as management, administration, finance and accounting.

I then smile and ask again, “Now, how many people here are really in sales?” At this point, virtually every person in the room has raised a hand. We all smile at the realization that each of us is in the business of selling every single day.

From the time you get up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, you are negotiating, communicating, persuading, and influencing – trying to get people to cooperate with you to accomplish the things that you want them to accomplish. So the pivotal question with regard to selling is not if you are doing it, but if you are good at it.

All top executives are excellent salespeople. All effective parents are wonderful salespeople. All effective employees use sales techniques to get their coworkers and bosses to go along with them and to cooperate with them in getting the job done. Everyone who is effective in virtually any are of life that involves other people is an excellent salesperson of some kind.

Unfortunately, over the years, a stigma has grown up around the selling profession. Many people feel that selling is a low-level type of activity and they don’t like to be associated with it – even people who are in sales! Virtually no colleges or universities have a “Department of Selling,” even though almost 15 million Americans make their living by selling something to someone. It is the largest single, identifiable occupational group in the United States.

Salespeople are the movers and shakers in every business and industry. They are the key people who create the demand for all the products and services that keep everyone employed at every other occupation.

The basis for all successful sales efforts is a discipline called gap analysis. Gap analysis is clearly defining what your idea, product, or service can do for a person and then deciding how to demonstrate that in a compelling way.

People tend to buy based on how they anticipate feeling as a result of owning and enjoying a particular product or service. In fact, they make their decision based on whether or not that feeling is more valuable to them than the money they will have to part with.

In selling or persuading anyone to do anything, there is an “ABC theory of motivation” that is very powerful. In it, “A” represents a state of “felt dissatisfaction.” This means that the individual is not satisfied with his or her current situation or condition.

The “C” represents a state of greater satisfaction. If the individual can get to this state, the felt dissatisfaction in his or her current situation will be relieved.

The “B” in this ABC theory is the product, service, idea, action, or activity that you are trying to persuade the person to acquire or to engage in.

So, to repeat, the “A” is the existing state of dissatisfaction. The “C” is the future anticipated state of greater satisfaction or relieved dissatisfaction. The “B” is what you are offering as a means to that relief.

According to this theory, getting people to do something that they would not have done in the absence of your influence is possible only when a gap exists between their current situation and the ideal situation that they would like to enjoy.

The very best persuaders, communicators, and salespeople are those who concentrate their attention on identifying the exact gap that exists and determining how big it is. They then focus on widening that gap in every possible way, until the prospect begins to feel more and more dissatisfied with his or her current situation and more and more desirous of enjoying the preferable situation that is achievable by the use of the product, service, or idea.

Let me give you an example. I was quite happy with my car until recently. It was a nice car, it was paid off, and it was running fine. Then I took it in to the dealership for a regular checkup and service. The service manager did an excellent job of analysis and came back to me with the sad fact that the car required not only new tires all around, but also a complete new set of brakes, a wheel alignment, and a lot of other things. The total cost would be about $3,000.

You can imagine my reaction. I was shocked. I had no idea that the car required that much service. Well, I thought, what the heck, at least it’s cheaper than buying a new car. Then a salesman at the dealership pointed out to me that the car would drop another $2,000 in value at the turn of the model year, which was coming up in about 60 days. He told me that if I kept the car, and repaired it, I would lose $5,000 off the total value of the car, which I could never recover.

Suddenly, I went from complacency about my car to dissatisfaction, and then to great dissatisfaction and an intense desire to improve my condition in some way. The salesman then went on to explain that he could take my car as a down payment on a brand new luxury automobile, with no cash out of my pocket, and he could spread the payments over three, four, or five years so that the cost to me would be very reasonable. At that, all my resistance vanished. I started out satisfied with my car, then became so dissatisfied with it that I bought a brand new, expensive luxury car – and, surprisingly enough, I drove away happy.

Here are some of the key points in gap analysis that my salesman applied. You can use these same techniques to persuade people to move from where they are to where you want them to be.

Remember that people buy solutions to their problems, not products or services. In fact, as a salesperson, you need to be more of a problem finder than a vendor. The more you focus on the problem, or the gap that exists between the real and the ideal in the customer situation, the faster you will find a place where your product or service can plug the gap.

The bigger the problem that the customer or prospect has, the bigger the potential sale. One of the most powerful questions you can ask a person is, “How much is that problem costing you?” Help him to identify not only the obvious, direct costs, but also the not-so-obvious, indirect costs.

Ask the prospect, “What are the implications? What is the meaning of that problem to you? What other things does it affect in your work or personal life?”

The most astute salespeople are those who are capable of finding a small gap and then expanding it into a wide gap. They are capable of discovering a small problem or dissatisfaction in the mind of the prospect and then, by questioning and commenting, increase it until the prospect develops an intense desire for the solution they are offering.

If you are selling to companies, you have to ask what the decision makers in the organization want to accomplish. What is the gap between where they are and where they want to be? How is the decision maker rewarded, and for what? What does the decision maker have to do to earn the respect, esteem, and support of this or her superiors and coworkers?

One of the deepest subconscious needs of all people is the need for self-esteem, for feeling valuable, important, and worthwhile. If you can ascertain what people need to do to increase their self-esteem and their perceived value in their organization, and then show them that by using your product or service, they can earn the approval and appreciation of the people around them and above them, they will often be very motivated to buy what you are selling.

When you meet prospects for the first time, you will find that they are usually unaware that a gap exists between where they are and where they could be. They will often say things like, “I’m not interested,” or “I can’t afford it,” or “We’re quite happy with our current situation.” These are normal and natural responses. No one likes to change. Your job is to describe a state of even greater satisfaction that they could enjoy if they did something different. Virtually all advertising is aimed at showing people how much better off they could be with a product or service that they have not yet acquired.

Gap analysis is based on asking good questions – questions focused on discovering problems that might be troubling the prospect. There is a direct correlation between the use of good questioning techniques and sales success. The more and better questions you ask aimed at finding a problem or uncovering a dissatisfaction, the more interest the prospect will have and the more sales you will make. The person who asks questions has control.

Good salespeople always plan the wording of their questions, rewriting them and practicing them before they get face-to-face with a prospect. Poor salespeople, on the other hand, make up their questions as they go along.

Here are some great questions for gap analysis.

The first question is an application of the “magic-want technique.” Imagine that you have a magic wand that you can wave over the prospect’s situation and you ask this question: “Mr. [or Ms.] Prospect, if this situation were absolutely perfect in every respect, what would it look like? Then remain completely silent. When the prospect begins to describe that perfect situation, you’ll uncover the gaps you can fill to create his or her ideal future. When you explain how your product or service can bridge those gaps, you will greatly enhance your chances of making a sale.

A great set of questions begins with the words What if? For example, you can ask, “What if we could achieve this particular result for you; what effect would that have on your current operations?”

Good questions that grab the prospect’s attention will start him or her visualizing and imagining an ideal future state, exactly the state that your product or service is meant to achieve.

A final key to effective selling through gap analysis is to share some of the experiences of people who have previously purchased your product or service. Use third-party references, testimonials, and anecdotes. Say something like, “I have a very good customer who had a similar situation to yours not long ago.” Then go on to explain how your customer was able to rectify that situation in a cost-effective way by accepting your recommendation.

To be truly persuasive in the selling process, use gap analysis. Instead of trying to overwhelm your prospects with reasons and rationales for doing what you want them to do, ask questions aimed at uncovering their current problems, needs, and dissatisfactions. Listen carefully to the answers they give you, and ask additional questions to help them expand on their situation. Take a few moments to feed their answers back to them, to show that you were really listening and that you really understand their needs. Then position yourself to influence and persuade your prospects by showing them how your product or service just happens to be the ideal way to solve their problem, satisfy their need, or achieve their goal.

When you take this low-pressure approach to getting people to do what you want them to do, they will buy from you with pleasure, and they will recommend you to their friends. They will feel they are being helped to improve their lives rather than being pressured into buying something that they may not want or need.

The wonderful thing about selling is that it is a learned skill. No matter what level of selling ability you possess today, by continued practice, you can become better and more persuasive. And the more effective you are at selling, the more successful you will be in every area of your life.

Consulting Versus Selling

One particular self-image possessed by high-achieving salespeople is that they see themselves as consultants rather than as salespersons.

They see themselves as problem solvers with their products or services rather than as vendors looking for someone who will trade them money for what they have to offer. They do not approach their customers with hat in hand, hoping for a sale.

They approach their “clients” with the attitude that they are consultants calling on the prospect to help him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal. Seeing themselves as consultants, they ask questions carefully and listen intently.

They focus all of their energies on understanding the customer’s situation so that they can make intelligent recommendations based on what the customer really wants and needs. As consultants, they recognize that they must be experts, authorities in their field.

They know their products and services from one end to the other. They invest many hours familiarizing themselves with every single detail of what they sell, and of what their competitors sell as well.

They know the strengths and weaknesses, the advantages and shortcomings, the features and benefits of what they are offering. They have excellent product knowledge which their customers can sense and which gives both themselves and their customers greater confidence throughout the sales conversation.

Top salespeople, positioning themselves as consultants, see themselves as resources for their clients. They see themselves and carry themselves as advisors, mentors and friends.

They become emotionally involved in their transactions and they are generally concerned that their product or service be the ideal solution to the real needs of the prospects they are dealing with.

They differentiate themselves from their competitors by being more concerned with helping their prospects than with selling their products or services.

Their customers often feel that they care more about them than they care about making a sale. And it’s true.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, see yourself as a problem-solver rather than as a salesperson. Take sufficient time to understand the prospect’s real need before you start selling.

Second, think of ways to tailor your product or service to your customer’s needs so that he sees what you sell as the ideal solution for him.

Closed-Ended Questions

Closed-Ended Questions — how to use a specific type of question to get a definite answer.

Closed-ended questions allow you to get definite answers and move toward closing the sale. Closed ended questions start with verbs, such as “Are,” “Will,” “Is,” “Have,” “Did,” and even contractions such as “Aren’t,” “Didn’t,” and “Won’t.” This is often called a convergent question. It brings conversation gradually to a convergence on a single point or decision. It is answered with a “yes” or a “no.” You use this question when you want to begin narrowing the conversation and getting specific answers that lead you to a conclusion or a commitment.

You can use closed ended questions to get more specific answers. “Will you be making a decision within the next two months?” “Are you considering changing your suppliers for this product?” “Is this the sort of thing you are looking for?”

A closed ended question forces the prospect to take a position. “Do you like what I’ve shown you?” “Does this make sense to you, so far?” “Would you like to get started on this right away?” You use this type of question when you want to get clear answers and bring the sales conversation to a close.

The third type of question is a variation on the first two and is called the “negative answer” question. This is when a “no” means a “yes” to your proposition. “Are you happy with your existing supplier?” If the customer says “no” it means that they are interested in considering a new supplier. “Are you getting the kind of results that you expected?” If the customer says “no”, it means that the customer is open to considering your product or service as an alternative.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, begin closed-ended questions with verbs. Whenever you want the customer to be more specific or to take a definite stand on your product or service.

Second, ask closed-ended questions in a warm, friendly, curious tone of voice. Always be courteous, caring and concerned.

Never use pressure or manipulation.

Becoming a Master of Persuasion

Persuasion power can help you get more of the things you want faster than anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure. It can guarantee your progress and enable you to use all of your other skills and abilities at the very highest level. Your persuasion power will earn you the support and respect of your customers, bosses, coworkers, colleagues and friends. The ability to persuade others to do what you want them to do can make you one of the most important people in your community.

Fortunately, persuasion is a skill, like riding a bicycle, that you can learn through study and practice. Your job is to become absolutely excellent at influencing and motivating others to support and assist you in the achievement of your goals and the solving of your problems.

You can either persuade others to help you or be persuaded to help them. It is one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction involves a complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they are usually the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are doing the persuading.

The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by something. Your job is to find out what motivates other people and then to provide that motivation. People have two major motivations: the desire for gain and the fear of loss. The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the things they value in life. They want more money, more success, more health, more influence, more respect, more love and more happiness. Human wants are limited only by individual imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still wants more and more. When you can show a person how he or she can get more of the things he or she wants by helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate them to act in your behalf.

President Eisenhower once said that, “Persuasion is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do, and to like it.” You need always to be thinking about how you can get people to want to do the things that you need them to do to attain your objectives. People are also motivated to act by the fear of loss. This fear, in all its various forms, is often stronger than the desire for gain. People fear financial loss, loss of health, anger or disapproval of others, loss of the love of someone and the loss of anything they have worked hard to accomplish. They fear change, risk and uncertainty because these threaten them with potential losses. Whenever you can show a person that, by doing what you want them to do, they can avoid a loss of some kind, you can influence them to take a particular action. The very best appeals are those where you offer an opportunity to gain and an opportunity to avoid loss at the same time.

There are two ways to get the things you want in life. First, you can work by yourself and for yourself in your own best interest. You can be a “Robinson Crusoe” of modern life, relying on yourself for the satisfaction of your needs. By doing this, you can accomplish a little, but not a lot. The person who looks to himself or herself completely is limited in his or her capacities. He or she will never be rich or successful.

The second way to get the things you want is by gaining and using leverage. Leverage allows you to multiply yourself and get far more out of the hours you put in rather than doing everything yourself. There are three forms of leverage you must develop to fulfill your full potential in our society: other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge, and other people’s money.

You leverage yourself through other people’s efforts by getting other people to work with you and for you in the accomplishment of your objectives. Sometimes you can ask them to help you voluntarily, although people won’t work for very long without some personal reward. At other times you can hire them to help you, thereby freeing you up to do higher-value work.

One of the most important laws of economics is called “Ricardo’s Law.” It is also called the Law of Comparative Advantage. This law states that when someone can accomplish a part of your task at a lower hourly rate than you would earn for accomplishing more valuable parts of your task, you should delegate or outsource that part of the task.

For example, if you want to earn $100,000 a year, in a 250 day year, you need to make $50.00 per hour. That means you must be doing work that is worth $50.00 per hour, eight hours per day, 250 days per year. Therefore, if there is any part of your work, like making photocopies, filing information, typing letters, or filling out expense forms, that is not valued at $50.00 per hour, you should stop doing it. You should persuade someone else who works at a lower hourly rate to do it for you. The more lower level tasks you can persuade others to do, the more time you will have to do tasks that pay you higher amounts of money. This is one of the essential keys to getting the leverage you need to become one of the higher paid people in your profession.

Management can be defined as “getting things done through others.” To be a manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they persuade them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and agreed-upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he or she has a vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.

In every part of your life, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job with the same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal persuasion. It may seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves you an enormous amount of time in the completion of the task.

The second form of leverage that you must develop for success in America is other people’s knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many other people if you want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are not those who know everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more often than not, they are people who know how to find the knowledge they need.

What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals? Of the knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to control your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy, or rent from others?

It has been said that, in our information-based society, you are never more than one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge in the country. With on-line computer services that access huge data bases all over the country, you can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by using a personal computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from another person in order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade them to help you is to ask them for their assistance.

Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them and motivate them to want to help you. So don’t be afraid to ask, even if you don’t know the individual personally.

The third key to leverage, which is very much based on your persuasive abilities, is other people’s money. Your ability to use other people’s money and resources to leverage your talents is the key to financial success. Your ability to buy and defer payment, to sell and collect payment in advance, to borrow, rent or lease furniture, fixtures and machinery, and to borrow money from people to help you multiply your opportunities is one of the most important of all skills that you can develop. And these all depend on your ability to persuade others to cooperate with you financially so that you can develop the leverage you need to move onward and upward in your field.

There are four “Ps” that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both your work and personal life. They are power, positioning, performance, and politeness. And they are all based on perception. The first “P” is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives that you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will be persuaded by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you appear to be a senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more likely to help you and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be a lower level employee.

The second “P” is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the mind and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being influenced by you.

In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how you could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in such a way that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve your goals.

The third “P” is performance. This refers to your level of competence and expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability to get results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only does an average job. The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an extremely persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people around you. They will accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree with your requests.

The fourth “P” of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you. They are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and accomplish your goals. Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest of all subconscious needs, the need to feel important and respected. Whenever you convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your treatment of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and influenced by you in almost anything you need.

Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change their perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you change the things that they will do for you.

You can become an expert at personal persuasion. You can develop your personal power by always remembering that there are only two ways to get the things you want in life, you can do it all yourself, or you can get most of it done by others. Your ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, influence, delegate and interact effectively with other people will enable you to develop leverage using other people’s efforts, other people’s knowledge and other people’s money. The development of your persuasion power will enable you to become one of the most powerful and influential people in your organization. It will open up doors for you in every area of your life.

Be Prepared to Ask

If you make a perfect presentation, one that clearly explains the benefits and resolves all the doubts that a qualified prospect might have, the sale will often close all by itself, like a ripe apple dropping out of a tree into your hand. You will conclude your presentation, check to be sure that the prospect has fully understood the benefits and value to him of the offer and the prospect will say something like, “It sounds good to me, how do I get it? Will you take a check?” When you are dealing with a prospect who knows exactly what he wants and you structure your presentation so that you demonstrate to him that your product fills his needs perfectly, he can make a buying decision and invite you to wrap up the sale. But this kind of result in selling is similar to a miracle: it’s not that miracles don’t happen, it’s just that you can’t depend on them. You must go into every sales situation prepared for the likelihood that your prospect will have questions unanswered, concerns unresolved and objections to be overcome. Simultaneously, you must know a variety of ways to ask for the order at different points in the sales process, and you must be capable of recognizing which closing technique is most appropriate at any given time. Like a master craftsman, you need a variety of tools with which to do excellent work. The best salespeople are invariably those who are the most skilled in the fine points of bringing the sales conversation to a positive conclusion. Your first job in the sales conversation, and throughout all of your interactions with the customer, is to build and maintain a relationship. It is to come across in a friendly way, to be warm, supportive, knowledgeable and completely focused on helping the customer to solve a problem or achieve a goal with your product or service. Because of the importance of trust in modern selling, you are never pushy, obnoxious or overly aggressive. You never to or say anything that can be construed as manipulative. You never attempt to influence your prospect to act contrary to his best interests. Your job is to thoroughly understand his situation and to give good recommendations that enable him to make the right buying decision. Now, here are two things that you can do immediately to put these ideas into action. First, be prepared to close the sale quickly and smoothly, and get out, when it is clear the customer is ready to buy. This is your job. Don’t hesitate. Second, be sure that you keep your eyes on the quality of the relationship throughout. Avoid using pressure or manipulation so you can always come back again later.

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