Grant Cardone - If You're Not First, You're Last - Sales Strategies to Dominate Your Market and Beat Your Competition

Developing sales skills involves communication, motivation, belief in your product, a great attitude, presentation skills, the ability to negotiate and close the deal, follow-up, and the creation of new and qualified opportunities. Selling is to an organization what food, water, and oxygen are to the body. Businesspeople sometimes exhibit a disdain at the notion of being labeled a salesperson, but this is a critical error. This disdain is a result of never taking the time to learn the mechanics and true art of selling. Many people were able to avoid selling due to demand for their product or because of a period of time of careless spending and free credit. But there comes a time in every person’s career where you will either learn the skill of selling or give up any hope of ever being first. Even those who consider themselves to be professional salespeople usually only learn a few basics about their craft and never perfect all the tools available to them. I am not talking about selling as an activity here, but the ultimate way to dominate and ensure yourself the top seat in the marketplace.

Most salespeople typically learn a few fundamental skills in the first 90 days or so—and then spend the rest of their careers operating under this initial, foundational knowledge. If a boxer took that approach, he would never make it to a paid fight, regardless of his natural abilities. Despite the myth, no one is “born a salesman.” I am an expert in sales, but trust me I was not born a salesperson. I was born a baby like everyone else and have the photos to prove it. No one I have ever met has been instilled with closing skills—these are developed. While some people have a natural ability to build a rapport that lends itself to the profession of selling, they won’t become masters at the art of bringing in revenue unless they develop a full set of skills. A lot of salespeople become good enough to call themselves professionals but avoid spending the time to become experts—and that is a big mistake. Even professionals can spend a career destroying opportunities and then go home and complain about how tough selling is. And that is during good times! When the economy gets tough, the complaining gets louder, the pain becomes intensified, and many salespeople become statistics—and only after it is too late, they wish they would have prepared more.

A daunting economic situation usually means too much time and not enough sales. Those who really understand selling as a science and a technology—and who spend time to develop and perfect their entire set of sales skills—are the people who will realize success. Salespeople of this caliber stand to benefit from contracting markets; there will be more business for them as their competition falls by the wayside. Consistent sales results will not go to the mediocre, the average, the weak, or the order takers. Business ends up in the hands of the professional or those willing to give their products and services away, and the latter clearly won’t be around for long. Mediocre salespeople always face challenges during periods of contraction.

So wake up and realize that you cannot survive and prosper if you don’t learn to sell yourself, your products, services, ideas, and dreams. This holds true for everyone, regardless of his or her position. Selling is not a job ; it’s something you do in order to make things happen for yourself.

Now is the time to hammer down and work daily on training, education, and improving your sales skills. I suggest that you do this no matter what position you have in your organization. People who can generate or assist in the generation of sales and revenue will never be without work, money, or opportunity. You must commit to understanding selling as a technology, a system, and an art and commit to becoming an expert as a way to the top not approach it merely as a job.

Take every opportunity and free moment you have to learn the art of selling. Use the time you spend commuting to and from work each day to listen to material on generating revenue for yourself and your company. Call my office and let us show you how to turn your car or computer into a schoolhouse on learning to close deals. We can hook into your computer and stream virtual sales motivation, solutions, coaching, and training to you 24/7. Call my office for a free demonstration of our virtual sales training. I assure you it will blow your mind. Start focusing your attention on growing your business, using objections as a way to close more deals, negotiating strategies that will double your gross selling volumes, and how to leave your competitors in the dust. Every action that precedes this chapter is dependent upon your understanding and confidence in your ability to sell. There is no skill set more vital to ensuring that you advance and conquer.

Visit www.virtualsalestraining.com to find out more.

Remember that after long periods of prosperity, businesses get used to taking orders and tend to forget about selling. Any weaknesses in this most necessary skill—and even the company’s sales processes—are easy to overlook during periods of economic expansion. Some level of success is always achieved due to the ease with which people spend and invest. During periods of contraction, however, every shortcoming is magnified and results in lost opportunities and vital revenue. Starting in the mid- 1980s, companies, entire industries, and sales ventures began to depend on mass marketing in order to drive traffic and produce sales. But extensive advertising budgets aren’t cost effective during contractions, so it’s back to a period of a smaller number of opportunities. And you had better make the most of each one because you need the revenue. This is when it’s absolutely critical to learn (maybe relearn) everything there is to know about creating selling opportunities, determining your prospects’ motives, getting agreement, presenting, negotiating, and closing. Periods of slowdown are the time to train, not the time to complain.

For 25 years, I have made myself a student of selling. I’ve tried to learn everything I can about selling as a technology and an art, not just a position. Because of that commitment, I ended up with a career instead of a job—and there is a great deal of difference between the two. Through my personal research, I have determined that there has been very little written on selling over the past 50 years that is different or unique. I therefore came up with Information-Assisted Selling TM. There are new advances in sales today that I have validated in the marketplace and proved to be more effective than many of yesterday’s worn-out strategies. These improvements have been used to revolutionize entire industries, revitalize thousands of businesses, and energize hundreds of thousands of individuals. There is not an industry on this planet that does not change in some way or another, and those that don’t change simply cease to exist. I broke the selling code in the twenty-first century by creating new ways to handle people in order to get your products sold—no matter what is going on with the economy. These breakthroughs have not just augmented sales results; they’ve increased customer satisfaction, shortened sales cycles, and improved employee retention. I have been personally contacted by thousands of people who once thought that after spending a career in selling, going to seminars, and reading books, they knew it all—but have been blown away by these new developments. My books, audio and video programs, sales training virtual technology, online programs, schools, and seminars will make you a master at the art of selling—despite the economy, competition, or what personality type you have.

Vincent Van Gogh—one of the greatest artists who ever lived—sold only a single painting of the hundreds he painted during his lifetime. This was an individual who produced some of the greatest art in the last 2,000 years, but because of his inability or unwillingness to sell, his brilliance didn’t generate any revenue until long after his death. This goes to show you that no matter how exceptional your product, you won’t benefit financially if you can’t sell it.