SuccessCo

Success Book ~ Stop Telling – Start Selling

Excerpt from Stop Telling – Start Selling by Linda Richardson

Use Opened Ended Questions
Open-ended questions begin with the words who, when, why, what, to what extent, and give the customer a chance to expand on a point. Closed ended questions begin with such words as do and are and usually result in a yes or no answer. Open-ended questions are more efficient and effective when you need more information or want to avoid a flat no. They can help you avoid forcing the customer to take a defensive position or give an answer that is not only short in content but “short” in tone. The real problem with closed ended questions is that things aren’t usually black and white, and with them you can miss the chance to get more information.

Stop Telling, Start Selling: How to Use Customer-Focused Dialogue to Close Sales

Success Book ~ The other 90%

Excerpt from The other 90% Written by Robert K. Cooper

Don’t Assume; Ask and Observe
When trying to understand someone or something in life, it’s essential to begin with as few assumptions as possible, to hesitate when presuming to know anything by guesswork about others. Instead, we must ask and observe. One way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to pause when you’re about to use guesswork and, instead, to ask questions. Listen intently and communicate with care until you are as clear as possible about what you and others feel about the situation at hand and what you each will commit to doing. Ask for what you want. Encourage others to do the same.  Whenever we experience vague or mixed messages, the brain is primed to instinctively assume the worst. We may presume, for example, that others are selfish and manipulative – and begin to treat them or talk about them that way – even if it isn’t true. The best antidote I know is clarity. Avoid settling for murky motives or dangling commitments. Talk to individuals about personal matters “off stage.” Ask for their view. Admit what you’re uncertain about or need to know. Perceive and demystify. Observe and learn. Such efforts at clarity save time and promote trust.

The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life

Success Book ~ The One Minute Sales Person

Excerpt from The One Minute Sales Person written by Spencer Johnson

When making a sale, we use a lot of words to describe the feeling. Words like confidence, courage and a winning attitude. That’s the feeling that fuels high performance and ensures better results. But remember, the worrisome images we create and play in our minds are just as powerful. These are the images that create fear and doubt. The exciting reality is that we can create and play the mental movies of our choice. That’s power.
Most sales people (The eighty who make only twenty percent of the sales) are not aware of the mental images they are seeing in their minds just before they make a sales call. There not aware of the power such images have to undermine sales.
You, however, can be part of the outstanding twenty percent of sales people who make eighty percent of the sales. You can choose your success by seeing it before it happens.

One Minute Sales Person, The: The Quickest Way to Sell People on Yourself, Your Services, Products, or Ideas--at Work and in Life

Success Book ~ The E Myth Revisited

Excerpt from The E Myth Revisited written by Michael E. Gerber

Adolescent Survival
The most tragic possibility of all for an adolescent business is that it actually survives.
You’re incredibly strong willed, stubborn, single-minded individual who’s determined not to be beaten.
You go into your business every morning with a vengeance, absolutely convinced that it’s a jungle out there and fully committed to doing whatever’s necessary to survive.
And you do survive. Kicking and scratching, beating up your people and your customers, ranting and raving at your family and friends – because, after all, you’ve got to keep the business going. And you know there’s only one way to do it; you’ve got to be there – all the time.

In adolescent survival you’re consumed by the business and the possibilities of losing it.
And so you put everything you have into it.
And, for whatever reason, you manage to keep it going. Day after day, fighting the same battles, in exactly the same way as you did the day before.
Night after night, you go home to unwind, only to wind up even tighter in anticipation of tomorrow. Finally, your business doesn’t explode, you do!

You’re like a twelve cylinder engine working on one cylinder, pumping away, trying with everything you’ve got to produce twelve cylinders worth of results.

But finally and inevitably there’s nothing left.
There’s simply nothing more you can do except face the fact that one cylinder can’t produce the results of twelve, no matter how hard it tries.

Something has to give, and that something is you.
Does this sound familiar?

Well, if you’ve been in business for a while, it should.
And if you haven’t been in business for long, it probably will sound familiar one day.
Because the tragedy is that the condition of infancy and adolescence dominates American small business.
It is the condition in most of the small businesses we at GERBER have visited over the past seventeen years, a condition of rampant confusion and wasted spirits.
It doesn’t need to happen. There is a better way.

Get the book

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

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The E-Myth Revisited CD : Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to do about it

Success Book ~ Superstar Sales Secrets

Excerpt from Superstar Sales Secrets written by Barry Farber

Don’t overload your audience. Because you’re passionate and enthusiastic, you may be tempted to share everything you know about your product or service. The truth is, your prospect only need to know what’s relevant to them. People wont retain an overload of information. Your job is to make the information interesting. Too many facts, and people’s minds begin to wander. According to some studies, the average attention span is eight seconds. So you’re better off concentrating on the two or three points most important to your prospect.

Superstar Sales Secrets: By Barry Farber

Success Book ~ The Art of Getting Things Done

Excerpt from The Art of Getting Things Done written by David Allen

The process: Managing Action

You can train yourself, almost like an athlete, to be faster, more responsive, more proactive and more focused in knowledge work. You can think more effectively and manage the results with more ease and control. You can minimize the loose ends across the whole spectrum of your work life and personal life and get a lot more done with little effort. And you can name front-end decision-making about all the “stuff” you collect and create standard operating procedure for living and working in this new millennium.

Before you can achieve any of that, though, you’ll need to get in the habit of keeping nothing on your mind. And the way to do that, as we’ve seen, is not by managing time, managing information, or managing priorities. After all:
You don’t manage five minutes and wind up with six;
You don’t manage information overload – otherwise you’d walk into a library and die, or the first time you connected to the web or even opened up a phone book, you’d blow up; and
You don’t manage priorities – you have them.

Instead, the key to managing all of your “stuff” is managing your actions.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Success Book ~ If life is a game, these are the rules

Excerpt from If life is a game, these are the rules Written by Cherie Scott, Ph.D.

Patience
Patience is the display of tolerance while awaiting an outcome. You are presented with the lesson of patience the moment you try to create a change within yourself. You expect immediate results and are often disappointed when your first few attempts to follow through fall short.  When people who try to loose weight cheat on their diets, they get very frustrated with themselves for not being able to stay with their new eating regime and berate themselves for not changing their patterns. As you already know, change is rarely easy, and you need to exercise gentleness and patience with yourself as you work your way through this process. Growth can be a slow painstaking process and patience will provide you with the stamina you need to become the person you want to be.

If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules

Success Book ~ Situational Selling

Excerpt from Situational Selling written by Dr. Paul Hersey

The Iceberg syndrome
When providing benefits, salespeople need to be careful of the “iceberg syndrome”. This phenomenon occurs when people rely on questioning skills alone to determine customer needs.

Responses to questions usually produce surface needs, which represent the “tip of the iceberg.” If the salesperson advocates a solution on only surface needs, stated benefits will be superficial as the needs that were expressed. This is the “iceberg syndrome.” – Missing critical in depth needs.

*Questions identify - Surface needs
*Encouraging and guiding responses tend to uncover - In depth needs and problems.

Success Book ~ Million Dollar Habits

Excerpt from Million Dollar Habits written by Robert J. Ringer

Part Time Verses Full Time Self-Discipline
There’s a big difference being self-disciplined in a certain situation at a certain time and being a self-disciplined person. Being a self-disciplined person is what the self-discipline habit is all about. Anyone can display self-discipline on occasion, but to get consistently positive results takes consistency. It’s the day-in, day-out practice of self-discipline that determines where you’ll be at the end of the week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Remember, a lifetime is nothing more than an accumulation of years, months, weeks and days, and what takes place in those smaller increments of time will determine whether or not your life, on a whole, is successful. If you aspire to play in the big leagues, you must be prepared to play every point as though it were match point. In other words, you have to be constantly focused. Dabblers are rarely, if ever, successful. It’s when you focus totally, intensely and consistently on one project – a project that has the potential to yield a worthwhile payoff – that you have the greatest chance for success.

Million Dollar Habits

Success Book ~ Words that sell

Excerpt from Words that sell Written by Richard Bayan
“The thesaurus to help you promote your products, services and ideas.”

“Like magicians with their props, or fisherman with their time tested lures, advertising copywriters rely upon a handy assortment of contrivances for seducing their audience. A copywriters tools are words, and the most effective tools are words that sell.”

Permits you to…
Assists you
Solves
Advises
We deliver…
That’s what we give you.
A good friend to have by your side
The solution to your…
Our friendly staff is here to assist you.
Were in business to help your business succeed.
Consultation
Precision marketing
First-hand briefing
A professional recommendation
A total management tool

Words that Sell, revised and expanded edition