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

Because of the increased competition that has accompanied the Information Age, the twenty-first-century buyer is much more knowledgeable, educated, selective, and certainly resistant to old-school approaches. Combine all of that with a contracting economy and lowest-price competitors who are “selling scared,” and your job of advancing your products and ideas in the marketplace becomes even more challenging.

As I mentioned previously, I began my first sales job in 1983 during a period of massive economic contraction. I was working in a highly competitive industry selling products that were not, for the most part, “must-have” items. Most of the individuals and companies either couldn’t afford my product or had reasons to delay purchasing it. But because I trained daily—even fanatically—to improve my skills, I would sometimes outsell the entire sales staff. In just one year, I had actually reached the top 1 percent in the entire industry in which I worked. Why? Not because I was a born salesperson but because I prepared daily on how to make the most of every opportunity in which I was engaged. Sales training, or what we like to call sales effectiveness , does not cost money; it connects you with the money you need during tough times in order to advance and conquer. You cannot afford to miss opportunities now; you have to be in perfect shape to take advantage of every day and every opportunity and be able to close every sale.

A lot of people worry about how to spend their money. However, they would be better served if they focused on improving their skills in order to earn more money and take advantage of every opportunity. The most successful people I’ve encountered concentrate on making the most of every opportunity they have to produce money. Advance and conquer; don’t retreat and save. You will waste more money in your lifetime on missed opportunities than you will ever spend. Investing in your education, learning how to communicate, and negotiating and closing transactions are the only ways to move forward.

Remember the rule of no . Whenever you say no to something in life, there is usually a lack of know . If you have no money, there is something you don’t know about money. If you have no prospects, there is something you don’t know about prospecting. If you find yourself with no closes, there is something you don’t know about closing.

The degree to which you know how to sell encompasses your ability to effectively communicate, attain an agreement, handle objections, be likeable, generate opportunities, give great product demonstrations, negotiate, and know how to close. It is naïve to think that you can train someone who doesn’t know how to sell, communicate, negotiate, and close deals. Why would a person pursue prospects when he or she doesn’t know what to do with them?

If you have not read my book Sell to Survive (www.selltosurvive.com), get it immediately. It will rehabilitate your skills as a salesperson and emphasizes the importance of selling to your future and your survival regardless of the economy or your title. No dream, idea, product, or service—no matter how good it is—will make it to the marketplace without someone to sell it. Your future, financial well-being and even job security are determined by your ability to create opportunities for your company and drive revenue through selling. Anyone who cannot generate opportunities or directly bring revenue to the company during periods of downturn will be the first to lose his or her job. The most needed and protected people in the workforce are those who can sell and bring in the money.

Despite what you may have been told, everyone sells at one time or another. Even A-list movie stars who are at the very top of their careers have to assist in selling their movies; if no one buys tickets, the studios will quit making movies with them. The president of the United States sells his or her way to the White House and, once there, must continue to sell in order to get his programs in place and get reelected.

Business schools state that the number one reason why companies and individuals fail is because they are undercapitalized; in other words, they don’t have cash. I don’t believe this to be true. People and organizations fail because they aren’t able to effectively sell their products and services in quantities great enough—and at prices high enough—to remain viable.

So whatever your job title or position may be, I plead with you to learn everything you can about this great lost art. It is the only way you’ll advance and conquer and never be stopped by something as trivial as the condition of the economy.

Become a master at selling.Visit www.grantcardone.com/resources

Ihave spent the past 18 chapters explaining the tactics that are necessary to advance and conquer in a struggling economy. What I want to do now is convince you to execute these actions as though your life completely depended upon each of them. I want you to shift into a level of operation whereby you throw away much of your social upbringing and training and develop the tendency and even preference to be completely unreasonable with these actions. Those who will succeed in the marketplace, especially during economic contractions, are the rule breakers, the noisemakers, the attention getters—the unreasonable ones. They are the “untouchables” who regularly do things that set them apart from the economy as a whole. Those who remain sensible become victims of economic swings and competition while those who act irrationally will expand, conquer, and grab market share.

Contrary to what Frank Sinatra claims in his song “My Way,” most people will have many regrets in their lifetime—not just a few. I expect that a fair number of individuals will look back and wish they had done more—not less—and really gone after their dreams with more energy, tenacity, and an unreasonable level of effort. I also think most will wish in hindsight that they had “swung for the fences,” taken the big gamble, and really put themselves all out there. So why wait until the end of your life to wish for these things? Start now, and approach every day as though your future depends upon an almost insane-like pursuit of success.

When I say insane here, I simply mean over the top, operating without the usual logic or reason that has a tendency to constrain people. I don’t want to respond as others would; I just want to get the job done. Behaving in this way means going forth without editing or judging your behavior based on how everyone else acts but instead on what it takes to accomplish the task at hand.

Social means “marked by or passed in pleasant companionship with one’s friends or associates.” A norm is defined as “a principle of right action binding upon the members of a group and serving to guide, control, or regulate proper and acceptable behavior.” Put together, you have social norm—one of the major reasons why people elect not to take the actions necessary to create the life they want. It’s a shame to see so many people doing solely what is necessary in order to survive when they have their backs against the wall. I have met thousands of extremely successful people, none of whom ever claimed that their success came easily to them. They all share the common purpose of making their dreams and goals a reality, and many of them did not truly experience their brilliance until they realized that the fulfillment of their dreams required them to act unreasonably. That purpose seems to fuel their willingness to be irrational, even to go against social norms at times. Consider this: Had the Founding Fathers of the United States conformed to the social norms of England, they would have ended up in prison instead of building a new country.