David H. Mattson - Sandler Enterprise Selling

If you enjoyed this book, discover your next great read with the following excerpt.

If you dont have a selling system of your

own when you are with a prospect, you

will unknowingly default to the prospects

system. The prospects system never says:

Sold. It says: Salesperson loses.

DAVID H. SANDLER

N o matter what business youre in, or which profession you practice, if you need to sell something to make a living, or if you rely on others to sell for you, Ive got something important to tell you: You cant teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar!

If youre interested in learning a proven system of professional selling, one that will help you feel good about saying that you sell for a living, and one that will teach you how not to sacrifice your self-esteem and dignity in front of a prospect, I guarantee you that youll benefit from reading You Cant Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar. I am convinced that the material in this book will help you. But if you read it and decide that Im wrong, simply call to tell us, and well buy the book back.

Lets go back some years to when you learned how to ride a bike. You didnt jump on a two-wheeler and take off, did you? If you were like most kids, you first had to learn how to ride the bike. You needed to acquire techniques and then practice mastering them. You had to balance yourself on the bike, and then you had to learn how to manipulate the bike so it responded to your needs. You had to visualize yourself riding that bike. Eventually, if you were to succeed at learning how to ride a bike, you and the bike had to become one.

The first time you sat on your bike, training wheels probably helped keep you from tipping over. You practiced riding day after day, balancing the bike while negotiating turns and bumps in the road. Even with training wheels, you fell off once in a while, right? But you continued to try to master the bike.

One day, even before you were an accomplished rider, you or your parents removed the training wheels, and you advanced to the next level of bike riding. At first, you felt jittery riding without the support of training wheels, but your friends were now riding solo, so it was time for you to try it too. And you did, although it took some self-talk to coax you to do it. Did it matter to you that some kids needed more time than others to learn to ride a bike? No! You had to ride that bike now.

Fortunately, you had someone, perhaps your parents, who steadied the bike for you while you practiced. You needed their guiding hand and their words of encouragement to keep the bike moving. You were thankful to have someone to grab the back of the seat of your bike and balance you as you pedaled the bike across the driveway or down the sidewalk. As you built up speed, the steadying hand let go. And what happened?

You fell off! Ouch, that hurt. Sometimes it hurt so much that you cried. Some days you thought it was impossible to learn to ride a bike. But you kept trying, if for no other reason than to keep up with your friends. Then one day, you sat on the seat, grabbed the handlebars of that bike, and pedaled all by yourself!

Almost like magic, you had conquered the art of riding a bicycle. You and the bike had become one. Your body had learned the right moves. Your head, hands, and eyes all worked together, and to someone who didnt know any better, it looked as though you had been riding a bike all your life.

Occasionally, you still fell off, or you ran into a tree or a parked car, but there was never any doubt now about your ability to ride. You knew you could do it. You knew you could be good at it. All you had to do was practice, practice, practice. Master the techniques, improve your skills, and youd never forget how to ride a bike. All you needed now was a little time.

Learning how to sell professionally is a lot like learning how to ride a bicycle. People dont learn to sell at a seminar, but the reinforcement training of a seminar is helpful. Nor do people learn how to sell from CDs, books, and videos, but these, too, are useful tools, like training wheels or a balancing hand.

To conquer the art of professional selling, you need to learn a system. You need to master techniques (but not traditional sales techniques), and you need to be nurtured and supportednot for a day or two, but for months, if not years. Selling professionally requires the modification of your behavior and the alteration of preconceived ideas that have been ingrained in the minds of both salespeople and prospects for centuries. Selling professionally is a process. You cant conquer the process overnight. You cant conquer it without reinforcement training. And no two people will learn the system in the same period of time.

Unfortunately, many people believe theres a shortcut to learning how to sell professionally. By the tens of thousands, these are the people who every year attend seminars and buy audios that are produced by self-appointed sales training experts who entertain but dont teach. Some of these experts are playing off the notoriety they gained in a profession other than sales. If they teach anything at all, its traditional sales technology jazzed up for modern times. And it doesnt work anymore! These entertainers have gleaned information from antiquated books about selling, and they extol their shtick in person, in books, on TV, online, and just about everywhere else to uncritical but often desperate people who accept it as factual, time-tested, sure-to-win sales technology.

What happens as a result? Nothing. Sooner or later, most of these people fall off the bike. Most never get up and try again. For a day or two following a seminar, theres a feeling of euphoria, and theres a guffaw during lunch about one of the entertainer s stories, but long-term benefits do not occur. Consider, for example, the message of a popular sales entertainer who explains his favorite technique for making cold calls, the most baneful of sales practices: Simply say to yourself over and over again: I love it! I love it! I love it! right before you go through a strange door. It will work every time!

Really? It never worked for me. And I tried it. If you try it, it wont work for you either. Since the late 1960s, Sandler Training has interviewed thousands of salespeople about cold calling, as well as many related topics. Those people who professed they liked making cold calls turned out to be the people who never made any! The real cold-callers summed up their opinion of cold calling in this visual image: OK, Christians, the lions are ready! So much for the professed experts.