When you sit down and talk with a successful professional salesperson, you will notice certain personality traits and techniques which are the primary reason for them excelling at their profession. I recently had a chance to sit down with a sales professional who makes around $1.4 million a year just selling her product to companies and individuals. How does she do this? She shared several important aspects with me that will help anyone improve their overall sales:



1. Know your product. She could not stress this enough. Her first step in training her employees is giving them a vigorous class on her products, including the history and exactly why there is a need for her products in society. This, after all, is the root of sales: Why do people need this product?

2. Never, never take a rejection personally. They are not disliking you, they just do not need your product. She shared a personal story with me about going an entire year without making a single sale. That would have been a good time to give up or take it personally, but she chose to stay in a positive mindset and tell herself that things would turn around eventually. And, like always, she experienced a boom soon after that.

3. Each no is a step closer to a yes. If a client says no, you have not done your job. You did not get to know the client well enough to be able to tell him why he should buy your product. You must take every experience, good or bad, as a learning experience. Reflect on what went well, what went poorly and what you could do differently next time. In that way, every experience is valuable.

You can take this thinking one step further and work out your current conversion rate. Once you have this information, you know the exact number of times someone has to say no before you get a sale.

4. Visualize the sale in two ways. The first way is to paint a picture in the clients mind. She said that some of her best employees had the gift of visualizing a world where everyone had the product, and because of that, their lives were better. They were then able to transmit this idea to clients and help them visualize the product in their lives. The best salespeople are able to tell a client exactly why they should buy their product, not use generic reasons. Giving this vision to clients is the first step to closing the sale.

The second way is take a moment out before you talk to a client. Imagine in your minds eye that the client is agreeing to what you are saying. Even create the vision of seeing the client signing on the dotted line. By doing this you can create calm in yourself and this subconscious confidence will shine through when talking to your client.

Truly, it was a pleasure to sit and talk to this sales professional about the techniques she has used to improve her status over the years. Hopefully you will be able to use her advice to improve your own sales experience.