Some people think that selling is all about overcoming the objections.

"Assume the sale, handle the objections, and you'll close the deal" is how their advice goes…

Yet if you ask the old experienced sales guy in any business, you'll find he doesn't deal with objections.

He doesn't "trial close" repeatedly to flush out and handle the objections one-by-one.

And he doesn't pitch without first talking with customers extensively about what they want, why, and what they don't want.

No.

Objections are for rookies.

Objections are what you get when you ask for the order before you know if you are going to get it.

Pitching, repeatedly asking for the order (or the appointment), and then handling the objections is tired and old.

And it is annoying and ineffective. Customers hate to be pitched and pushed by sales people that they think are only out for themselves.

When you sell by pitching, closing, and handling objections, you are showing that all you care about is the deal.

Selling this way is all about you. It's not about the customer. It's all about how fast can you close and get your bux, and your customer knows it.

Selling this way is why the sales profession has such a crummy reputation.

So how do you stop getting sales objections?

The answer is that you need to know what any "objections" to buying are going to be in the first place.

And then, stop referring to them as objections.

Instead, I call them issues or concerns.

When selling any product, there will be common concerns and issues that come up time and again across the customers that you sell to.

Know these issues, and you can prevent them from being problems when you sell.

You can find out up-front, early in the sale if any of the typical concerns or issues are going to stop a deal. And if they are going to stop a deal, either get out of the deal early, or figure out a way to make the issue acceptable to the customer.

Old sales pros don't get objections because they don't wait until asking for order to find out if there are any objections.

Deal with everything up-front and you'll close more deals faster than you did before.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

You may have noticed that prices are falling for many things.

The price of houses certainly has fallen to point out one giant obvious thing.

Yet simultaneously people are worried about future inflation.

Inflation of prices, prices going up in the future due to all of the money being created out of thin air by our gummint's massive borrowing binge.

So how much does price matter?

Are you having to drop prices because your customers are less willing to pay the prices you've been charging?

Or are you raising prices just to keep up with the increased costs of your own business expenses of the past few years?

You've probably heard the saying that the correct price is "whatever the market will bear".

This is all well and good if we are talking about stocks or commodities. Items that are bought and sold without the benefit of a direct sales person like yourself getting involved.

In such cases, the "market" (the herd) set's the price based on the sum of their individual perceptions of the value of the item in question.

When you are selling direct however, you are not dealing in herd mentality, you are involved in a one-to-one relationship with your prospect.

And your job is to frame and shape your prospect's perceptions of the value of your product.

Price will matter then only to the extent that you do NOT actively frame and shape your prospect's perceptions of the value they will receive from your product and from doing business with you.

Let your prospect make up his own mind, and price will probably wind up mattering a lot.

You see we are all socially conditioned to see similarly named or categorized products as offering similar value to us. It's a mental shortcut that we have developed to help make evaluating lots of options easier for ourselves.

Your job is to breakdown that shortcut by showing your prospect's differences between you and your competitors that will matter to your prospect.

Because what people are not cognizant of when they buy something, is the unspoken rule that they expect to get more value than they are paying for (or at the very least equal value to what they are paying out). Everyone expects to get equal or greater value than they pay out, or else they hold on to their bux.

That's buying, baby!

To show your prospect's the differences that matter then, you got to get off of the feature selling that shows how you have all the same capabilities and other stuff that all your competition does.

Instead you gotta ask the questions that will tell you what frustrations and aspirations matter to your prospect. THEN, spend nearly all of your time showing in depth how what you sell will help alleviate their pain, and help them realize their real wants.

When you sell this way, price stops mattering so much. The more your prospect believes that he will eliminate his pain and get his wants the fastest and the easiest with you, the more he will be willing to pay for it.

Differentiate yourself and create value for your prospect by showing them exactly how they will best get their personal wants met by doing business with you.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

P.S. My Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program shows you how to quickly find and leverage peoples pains and desires to close more sales without discounting. Get it now.

Many people today are whining.

Whining and wishing.

Whining about how much worse their business is this year.

Wishing for the "good ole days" of just a couple of years ago, when business was booming, and sales were easy.

Some people are celebrating though.

Celebrating their success.

Their success, now, in business, in sales, in today's economy.

These are people who take charge of their sales and their success.

One such guy is Adam Ford, a Sales Rep with Roll-A-Cover International.

Adam sent me an email the other day to tell me how well he is doing in today's economy…

Shamus, because of you I get really excited for cold and rainy days. Let me explain. I design retractable enclosures that restaurant and hotel owners put over patios and or outdoor pools.

I used to cold call on nice days and did okay but after listening to your CDs I decided to cold call when the weather is bad. The reason being these owners feel the pain of not being able to use their tables due to weather, whereas if they had my product they could be making money rather than looking at wet empty seats.

You are spot on that we as pros eliminate peoples' pain and help them make money. Before your CDs I was 'product puking' away. Now I talk to people who feel the pain and want to make a change. Anyways I just wanted to say thanks.

-Adam Ford

Congratulations Adam on taking charge of your sales and your success. In any "economy" there will always be some people whining about how hard times are while others are making money hand over fist.

The difference aint Obama, Bush, Bernanke or Greenspan.

The difference aint the economy.

The difference is what you think and how you think.

Adam came up with a unique insight after listening to my Persuasive Selling Skills CDs. He decided to go find the people feeling the pain that would cause them WANT to buy his stuff.

And in doing so, he instantly increased his success rate by a huge amount.

Prospects satisfied with the status quo, don't buy your stuff.

Prospects with pain do buy stuff. Stuff from you if you find them when they're in pain. Stuff from your competition if you don't find em in time.

If you are still product puking as Adam calls it in today's economy, then it's only a matter of time before you are out of a job or out of business.

Stop product puking now. Discover how to quickly find and create prospects who WANT to buy your stuff, from YOU with the Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program now.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

Sun Tzu said in The Art of War…

Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles.

Knowing yourself, knowing your company, knowing your products is not enough.

You must know when your competitors will fight you and how they will fight you.

Knowing your enemy is as important as knowing yourself. If you don't know your competition, their strategies and their sales tactics, then put an action plan in place today to get to know them.

Fail to do this, and you will lose many more deals than you will ever win.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

P.S. Most sales people have a miserable closing rate. You can close 70-90% of your deals and make a LOT more bux when you use the strategies and tactics I show you in my Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program - get your copy here now.

Whether you realize this or not you are responsible for this.

Every salesman is.

It's crucial to your success.

And if you don't proactively manage this, it will derail you, and destroy you.

What is it?

Your attitude.

A reader wrote in to me recently asking me to discuss the importance of prospecting in a down economy.

Prospecting is one of those things we do as sales people that demands the most attention to your attitude.

When you prospect, it can often feel like you are staring into a black hole.

You know, where you can't see anything, and your not sure if anyone, or anything is listening to you?

Even when times are good, prospecting is an unnatural exercise in creating confidence inside oneself.

You see your mind is constantly defining what every experience you have means.

When the economy is good, buyers are skeptical. Yeah, they got money to spend. But they don't want to get tricked by just any sales bloke. So they make it hard for you. They don't take your calls. Ignore your emails. And tell you they don't need what you got when you do talk to them.

And when the economy is bad… Whoa. They got all kinds of excuses. No budgets are being cut. Sales are down. No spending on new projects. Blah, blah, blah…

Rejection will drive your confidence into the ground if you take it personally.

And when you have that experience even for just one afternoon, your brain has learned that prospecting is painful. It tells you that you aint no good at it. So it protects you by coming up with a million reasons why it won't work and you shouldn't do it.

Are minds do their best to protect us from pain.

But when it comes to prospecting, the more we protect ourselves from pain - short term pain - the more likely we are to fail in the medium to long term.

You see the hardest thing about prospecting is that you don't know when the next success will hit. It's kinda like gambling. Your losing streak could last awhile, or your next big win could be just one more play away.

Neutrality and ice in your veins are required for success in gambling and prospecting.

You simply have to detach yourself and act as if you were watching someone else do the prospecting work while you do it.

Prospecting is always important. But its even more so, when the economy is contracting and businesses are closing.

No, not everything is going out of business. That's the good news.

Even better is that if you do the work, as long as it may take, you WILL find more prospects, and more business.

Sell with Pride,

-Shameless Shamus Brown

P. S. The way to find prospects who will buy today is to look for people in pain. Looking for people who are asking for your stuff is a sure path to failure in today's economy. Find out how to use my Persuasive Selling Skills to get more sales now.

How much do you trust yourself?

Do you trust your own judgment?

Do you trust in, believe in, and act on your intuition?

I can remember the moment when I started trusting myself.

One day it suddenly occurred to me that every deal I had ever won, and every deal I had ever lost I knew within the first one or two sales calls what the outcome would be.

I call this intuition.

You can call it gut feel if you want. I sometimes call it that too.

This was an important moment for me.

Important because I realized that I could, and should trust my own judgment about my deals more than anyone else.

I reached this point around 5 years into my selling career (which was back in the early 90s if you are just getting to know me).

It was a freeing revelation, because I now knew that I could put more faith in my gut intuition than in what my sales management might want me to do.

I stopped trying to convince myself that I could close every deal.

I stopped trying to use "will power" and "positive thinking" and "hope" to close sales.

And I started paying more attention - much closer attention - to what I was discovering about each deal, about each prospect, early on when I was first interacting with them and qualifying them.

Because people will tell you the truth if you ask them. And if you are willing to hear it.

Last week my intuition flared up for me again. The City Council for the small town that I live in announced that they were going to vote on banning the use of all fireworks here (even the simple stuff like sparklers).

When I heard about this, I instantly knew that the ban was likely to pass.

My intuition was telling me this. My brain was telling me this because I've seen many committee type decisions like this before in business and government. And the key thing that gave this away was that they were moving fast with the decision. There was little notice, which really meant little time for an opposition to gather and prepare a defense.

Regardless of what my intuition told me, I went to my City Council meeting and spoke vehemently against the ban and in support of our right to celebrate America's Independence Day with fireworks. I had hoped a lot more people like me would've shown up. And I had hoped to influence the outcome of the vote.

Not a lot of people showed up. And the result was the ban on fireworks usage passed.

Sad.

Yes, I did ignore my intuition. But I did so because it mattered to me to speak up in defense of something I believed in.

Selling products though isn't defending your rights. Selling isn't missionary work.

When selling, you need to trust your intuition, to follow your gut feel.

Because when you don't trust your intuition, you'll just find yourself pushing people to buy your stuff.

You don't want to do that. I doesn't work.

You want people to want your stuff, to want to buy from you, to pull you through the sale.

Find out what people want. Listen to their truth.

Spend your precious sales time on the people who want and are most likely to buy from you and you'll start closing the majority of your deals. A 50% close rate or better is totally achievable if you just follow this one tip alone.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

P.S. A 50% close rate is pretty good. How would you like to get your closing rate up to 70% or even 90% of your deals? Get my Persuasive Selling Skills now and discover how much happier and successful you can really be.

Sales Prospects know when sales people lying.

Now I know that you probably aren't dishonest.

You probably don't lie when selling.

But people look for little inconsistencies in every stranger they meet.

And people are being sold to, they scrutinize every little thing.

Most of your prospects are actually not formally trained in how to tell if a sales person is lying.

But knowing whether or not someone is being honest, direct, and well intentioned with us is a human survival instinct in my opinion.

You know, cavemen needed to know whether that stranger from another tribe really wanted to be an honest ally in the woolly mammoth hunt, or if he was gonna get conked in the head when it was all over.

People have developed a "sense", an unconscious sense, as to what someone's intentions are.

How that works is a mystery to most people.

They call it intuition, or a feeling, or whatever.

Personally I believe it can be explained, and that it works like this.

The human brain stores and can remember millions of details from every experience you've ever had.

So every time you interact with another person, your mind is constantly comparing ALL of the details of your current experience to those details of your past experiences.

All the details means how a person might be sitting, standing, fidgeting, speaking fast or slow or with a crack in his voice, tilting his head, shaking it slightly side-to-side while saying yes,

The mind is looking for meaning.

Is this friend or an enemy?

Is this sales person one who can help me, or just someone looking for his next commission?

The mind compares all those little details, at lighting speed, and completely unconsciously serves up a reaction, an interpretation, a meaning as to whether a sales person is honest or not. As to whether a sales person has his best interests at heart.

Now I know you are probably an honest person. So let me tell you why this matters.

Not only must your words be honest and true, but your beliefs and your feelings must be consistent with what you are saying.

Because try to hide things, hold things back, or embellish the situation, your prospect is going to pick up on it.

They may not say anything, but they'll have an uneasy sense that something is wrong.

They won't trust or believe you.

And you'll have a difficult or impossible time making the sale.

And you don't want that now, do you?

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

P.S. Don't get caught saying something that will cause your prospect to think you are lying. Get your prospect to pull you through the sale with easy method I show you in the Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program.

Here's my Sales Thought for the Week…

Either the economy is getting better, or we just think it is.

No matter, what'll really help your sales is if you believe your sales WILL get better. Optimism about your own future, regardless of what’s happening in the world around you, will greatly assist you in making it happen.

Decide you will have a great year and chances are you will.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

P.S. Once you decide to have a better year, follow through and give yourself the skills to make it happen now with my Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program.

Ever find yourself talking real fast on sales call or a phone call?

If you do, then slow down.

Slow way down.

And shut up once in awhile.

A salesman who is talking is NOT a salesman who is listening.

Silence is something you need to be very comfortable with to be a good seller.

Telling is not selling.

The one who is doing the "talking" is not in control.

The one who is asking the questions IS in control.

Questions get the other person to respond.

Questions direct the thoughts of the other person.

Questions are the shortest form of "talking".

You should be asking questions as much as possible, and talking very little about yourself or your business.

Yes, I know sales people think that they are there to talk about their business.

They think that prospects want - demand even - to hear why you should do business with them.

Well that's just the reflex action. That's what prospects think they want, because they don't know how to ask for what they really want.

And they are afraid that an evil, greedy, slimy sales person will take advantage of them, so they defend themselves up front by taking control and telling you to start talking about why you are so great.

I don't know about you, but I won't be a dancing sales monkey.

Many years ago, I learned to put off the question of "Why should I do business with you", and take control by asking questions myself.

This gets to the truth of the sale fast, cuts through the BS, and quickly gets to the real motivation, and real potential for the sale.

Don't be a dancing sales monkey.

Reclaim your self-respect.

Take control of every sale and start closing 70-90% of the deals you go after with the Persuasive Selling Skills Audio Program now.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

Yes, you read that right.

There's sooooo much sales opportunity right now.

These past few months have been some of the best since I have been in business.

But it's not just me.

There's sales opportunity all around.

The key is that sometimes you gotta be willing to go find it.

Many businesses that were built on the credit bubble and its side-effects are now having a hard time.

Well guess what? Those bubble days aren't coming back anytime soon.

But that doesn't mean you gotta wallow in it.

The people who are succeeding right now are those who are nimble.

You may just have to change what you are doing, what you are selling, how your business is positioned, or how it is focused.

You see a business is about more than just it's products.

A business is about its relationship with its customers.

And if you look at it that way, your business can sell multiple things and related things to your customers.

In fact if your current business is declining or dying because of the economic changes going in the world, instead of complaining about it and hoping things'll better, why not look for related things to sell to your customers?

Or if you're a salesman, why not go find a new and different product to sell those same customers you've been selling to these past few years?

Or maybe you just need to change the focus or positioning of your selling so that it's targeted at problems people do have and are willing to spend their bux on today.

Times change and needs change.

Sometimes you gotta change too.

Now go out and get some bux today from your customers.

Sell with Pride,

Shameless Shamus Brown

P.S. Need to change how you're selling? Discover my sure-fire method for getting more reluctant prospects motivated to buy right here.