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In selling, I try to remember that the prospect is in his office or place of business, has never seen or heard of me, and naturally is not interested in me. Therefore, the only possible way for him to become interested in me is for me to become interested in him. The only way I can interest him is to call his attention, in no uncertain terms, to some- thing that will add to his happiness, his health, or his wealth. After all, there are only three important things connected with a sale: You, the product, and the prospect. In geometry you are taught that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. In selling, the shortest distance between you and the prospect is a sale. A Sales Plan shortens this distance. It is easy to get an audience with the prospect, but your mission as a creative salesman is to do business with him and have him as a customer. To achieve this objective, you must hit the bulls-eye. Your gun may be the best and your powder the finest, but if your gun doesn't have a bullet, then it is certain that you are not going to hit the bulls-eye. The bulls-eye in selling is the sale, and your bullet is a prepared Sales Plan. It is absolutely impossible for you to give the prospect all the knowledge and information you possess about your product. He would not be able to grasp your meaning or to understand what you were trying to do for HOW TO CREATE A SALE 25 him. You would confuse him, and instead of making a sale you would possibly encounter an ignominious defeat. There- fore, the most common-sense thing for you to do is to take the best parts of the knowledge and information about your product and shape it into a prepared Sales Plan. In this way you avoid giving him the knowledge and information in a haphazard, hit-or-miss way, but you give it to him in a sci- entifically planned way. I had prepared and successfully used many different Sales Plans to sell many different products before entering the life insurance business. However, I wondered how in the world I could sell a life insurance proposition with only a rate book to show to my prospects. To me, this rate book was the key to a large safe deposit box, containing millions of dollars in cash assets that could instantly be shared in many different plans of life insurance. But my problem was to convince my prospects of this. Because I had been successful in gaining the attention of prospects about many other products that I had sold, I firmly believed that they would listen to me about a life insurance proposition. After all, the prospects who buy all the other products are the same prospects who buy life insurance. |
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