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Dominate and control your sales numbers with one book...

NLP at work by Sue Knight.

This is by far the best book on practical Neuro-Linguistic Programing with relation to sales I have ever read. After reading it my sales went through the roof.

After dinner drink?

Ophvedius

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I am just a monkey on a davenport in his living room. You can make me anything else you want.

Just remember that the most powerful method of doing anything is to research the different methods and find one that works for you.

I'm a big believer in NLP and a bunch of other stuff. I find that some of it comes naturally and most of it is about keeping your eyes and ears open. But, if you research something and identify with bits, but not others, don't waste time trying to fit into something you're not comfortable in. The most power will come from your 100% commitment to something and if you can give that to one system then vary the systems.

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Determination. Perseverance. Resolution.

Thanks, I'll add it to my list! I've just gotten to the point recently where I'm ready to study and practice the lesser magic end of things. I suppose my good nature made me feel bad for people when they were taken advantage of, and never had the heart to manipulate people like that.
I've come to a new understanding with it lately and think much of the information could help me in my work of molding children's minds, as well as dealing with their parents and difficult family members. I'm not in sales, but selling ideas to the right people can make them go along with my will which would make my life easier, so I'm going to do the reading and see where things go from there.
Much of it I'm finding comes naturally to me, though I now have a name for it and just remember to be aware of certain things when speaking to people.

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"Adapt and Overcome"

MistressLyria@gmail.com
www.myspace.com/lyriasdungeon

Don't forget that it isn't taking advantage of people, it's more about them wanting to help you but putting it in a way that they will be readily happy to help out.

Remember the definition of Sales is to "assist a customer in their buying decision" - that means that they may not know what they want, how much they want to spend, or even that they are a customer!

And Sales can be anything from selling a product, a service, an idea or even yourself (not in THAT way though).

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Determination. Perseverance. Resolution.

Sales is about getting the customer what they need at the highest dollar possible. I work on commission. If I spent all day telling people that they could buy the bare minimum of what suited their needs, I'd never make a buck! Manipulation, mimicry, and playing to human greed makes my paycheck nice and fat. I take advantage of people's greed everyday, and greed is always a strong motivator.

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I am just a monkey on a davenport in his living room. You can make me anything else you want.

Marketing is painting a picture of a dream for people who otherwise would have never dreamt it themselves.

Sales is letting people know they can have that dream, and then showing them how to get it.

Support is keeping the illusion of the dream alive for a little longer

_________________
BE AS A LION IN THE PATH
Hate For Hate - And Ruth For Ruth,
Eye For Eye - And Tooth For Tooth.
Scorn For Scorn - And Smile For Smile,
Love For Love - And Guile For Guile.
War For War - And Woe For Woe,
Blood For Blood - And Blow For Blow.

By the way, I'll have to check out that book too, I'm into that stuff as well. And I agree Grym, some of it comes naturally after a while, and it can be little things - like replacing the word if with when. Subtle language use can go a long way, as can NLP, but I do need to brush up on my NLP techniques. I do conciously do stuff with eye contact and posture, but I think I could use some fine tuning.

_________________
BE AS A LION IN THE PATH
Hate For Hate - And Ruth For Ruth,
Eye For Eye - And Tooth For Tooth.
Scorn For Scorn - And Smile For Smile,
Love For Love - And Guile For Guile.
War For War - And Woe For Woe,
Blood For Blood - And Blow For Blow.

It's not greed that you're taking advantage of, is it? It seems to me that it's poor skills of observation and judgement that you're really taking advantage of. Greed is not generally the cause of bad decisions. Poor skills pertaining to rational assessment of value is the cause of bad decision making.

What I mean by this is that all people will generally try to do what's best for themselves- but some people just don't know what's good for them. People who are both greedy and astute will try to get what they want at the absolute lowest price possible. They will research customer satisfaction, price shop, and negotiate their way to the best price, understanding that when it comes to spending, a penny saved really is a penny earned. On the other hand, those who are greedy and foolish will not be able to accurately calculate the cost/benefit related to the products and services you offer them, and will therefore be susceptible to greater manipulation.

Okay, well since CORE is taking it that way, I will too. I honestly thought you were joking when you were saying about the greed and taking advantage thing.

Preying on someone's greed and capitalising off it is not very Satanic. It's such a short term solution that it just isn't profitable.

Especially in any type of sales that has the possibility of return patronage. The goal is to get money out of the customer for a long time, not just one time.

If a customer wants to buy a TV and the cost price is $5,000 but you sell it to them for $6,000 you make a great profit. And when they realise how much they could have paid they will never come back.

If you sell the same TV for $5,500 (when the retail price is $5,750) you are giving them a great bargain, but still making money from the sale. They will be so happy with the purchase that they will come back and buy a Blu Ray, Surround Sound, TV Cabinet, Playstation, etc and when they need to upgrade their shit, guess who they come and see.

So, the first sales person gets $1,000 by fleecing the greedy and that's it. The second sales person gets $10,000+ in repeat business. And that's not even going into the fact that they will tell all their friends about this awesome deal that got on a telly.

To be successful in sales you need to build a customer base and you cannot do that by ripping people off. It only works short term and even them is not that successful considering that with the web, they can find out the price beforehand and KNOW they're getting ripped off.

Why eat one piece of fruit when you can plant the seed and eat for the rest of your life?

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Determination. Perseverance. Resolution.

This can be said to be true, except when the duration of value of such goods or services offered outlives either the purchaser or the vendor. (It might therefore be observed that a sales person ought to raise the average price of their product as they approach their own natural retirement or death. With a much reduced interest in future return sales, it does behoove one to squeeze the buyer a bit, does it not?)



This example is intuitive, and at first glance seems almost certainly true. But to the contrary, there is a well documented irrational cognitive bias toward believing one's purchase was a bargain, seemingly without regard to the actual price or value associated with the transaction. (This is usually called post-purchase rationalization, but I generally consider it to be a specific appellation of choice-supportive bias.)

While we should imagine that the man who payed $6000 for his TV might rather have payed $5000, he is likely to justify the purchase to himself anyway- even to the point of deliberately ignoring obvious data that he could have payed less. That shopper is just as likely (or nearly as likely) to return to, or recommend to others, the same vendor out of that continued and completely misplaced sense of value.

Even without this bias, the difference between actual value and perceived value can be easily demonstrated as a corollary of the cost of marketing (and therefore sales) itself. Essentially all marketing is designed to increase perceived value. The price of all this marketing, then, ought to be directly related to the overestimated value in combined retail purchases. Marketing as a whole must be profitable. This being said, and that the principle financial interest of all type, broadcast and screen media is advertising, there is a frightening conclusion to follow. That is, all broadcast television, radio, all published magazines, and most of the internet is bankrolled primarily by irrational behavior: a fundamental inability to asses value rationally.

Awesome observations Core. In fact, I would take it one step further. I was having a discussion about rates and things with a friend of mine a couple of days ago, he's a freelance photographer.

One of the hardest things to wrap your mind around when you're running a business, especially when it's a service based business or you're selling intangibles is charging too little. It happens all the time and is one of the biggest rookie mistakes. I fell into that trap myself at first - you almost feel bad about what you're charging people, so your automatic reaction is to reduce your prices - after all, it wasn't that hard to produce the product (to you). The problem is, by giving away your services at bargain rates, you are also telling your clients that it really isn't worth that much anyway.

I remember reading a book a long time ago, 'No B.S. Sales Success' by Dan Kennedy, one of the pieces of advice he gave is whatever you're charging, it's probably not enough. He was right. I increased my rates, and not only did the revenue go up because of higher prices, but there were more sales as well. It's all about perceived value. If something costs more, people rationalize that it must be worth it. This alone has probably been the driving factor in selling bottled water. I used to be in the pizza business many years ago too, and I remember what Pizza Hut would do when entering a new market - research the prices of the competition, and then charge more. It worked for them.

When businesses themselves are your customers (my case), this holds especially true. If a web designer sets up shop and decides to try to get business by charging $20 an hour, he will be out of business very soon, not only because you can't make a living at those rates (you don't usually get to bill 40 hours a week every week), but because businesses will recognize that he's a rookie, and will not entrust him with their marketing. On the other hand, if a web designer sets up shop, bills himself as a rock star designer, is hard to get ahold of because he's 'busy', and charges $70 to $100 an hour, he will get the cream of the crop clients. They want the best, and the best must logically cost the most (in their mind, anyway).

The same can translate to your TV example Grym. There are some brands that simply cost more, always (Sony for example). That price point has more to do with their markting position than the production costs. If Sony decided to drop all their prices to be cheaper than the bottom end generic brands, they may gain a few initial sales due to previous marketing momentum, but people would quickly put them at the bottom of the heap for quality becasue of perception alone (they sold out, all their stuff is crap now - has to be, look at the price!). The same is true of many products. Mattresses are a great example. If a bed costs $1800, it has to be better than the $600 one, my life will improve because I'm getting better sleep, therefore it's worth the extra $1200. In reality this is total bullshit and marketing, and more importantly, it works.

Moreover, people will rationalize the $1800 bed afterwards as Core has said, and because they need to justify it will tell their friends just how much better it is, bragging about how much more they must value their life because they didn't care how much they paid for the bed. Their friends will soon follow suit, not wanting to be known as the loser who couldn't even buy a decent bed.

_________________
BE AS A LION IN THE PATH
Hate For Hate - And Ruth For Ruth,
Eye For Eye - And Tooth For Tooth.
Scorn For Scorn - And Smile For Smile,
Love For Love - And Guile For Guile.
War For War - And Woe For Woe,
Blood For Blood - And Blow For Blow.

Just one more piece to add to this rant. Sales are made on emotions, not rational logic (vast majority of the time). People rationally know that the nicely labelled brand name can of soup on the grocery store shelf is exactly the same as the no-name can right beside it, and probably made in the same factory, however they still sell brand name soup. Why? People are not buying soup, they are buying the emotions that come with it. They want better for themselves, and somehow the one with the nice picture on the label is somehow better because it costs more.

Ophvedius, it's not greed you are preying on. You are simply giving customers what they want - the knowledge that they got the best, that this time, they didn't have to settle for the cheapest, that somehow this means they have some measure of success in their life. By selling them higher end products, you are letting them know you think they are not the dregs of society, that they deserve the best - and they are simply agreeing with you. It's not greed, it's self-worth. Look at it in that light, approach it that way and I bet your sales will go even higher.

_________________
BE AS A LION IN THE PATH
Hate For Hate - And Ruth For Ruth,
Eye For Eye - And Tooth For Tooth.
Scorn For Scorn - And Smile For Smile,
Love For Love - And Guile For Guile.
War For War - And Woe For Woe,
Blood For Blood - And Blow For Blow.

Not all sales are emotional. Some purchases are completely rational in every concrete sense. What's more, some people make more purchases based on utility than others. Of course, the most reasonable consumer is seldom considered a target for marketing.

But my original point had little to do with this. Rather I meant only to suggest that greed isn't a vice, but a virtue. And that one does not prey upon this strength of character. Rather, one preys upon a weakness. In the case of sales, the weakness one preys upon is irrationality, specifically as it pertains to assessment of objective utilitarian value.

Agreed. They also sell the no-name soup too. That's why they both are on the shelf.



QFT



Good point. So, there are 2 kinds of customers - those that buy into marketing hype, and make irrational decisions and are emotionally driven. These are the ones you steer to the 'good stuff', the $6000 TV because it's somehow 'better'. Again though, I don't think this is taking advantage of them at all - this is really what they want you to do. They want to be sold. They want the experience, and are there to buy the emotions as much as the product itself. You are not doing them any favours by giving them the actual utilitarian solution or product.

The other customer, who may be well off but still buys no-name products, is not taken in by marketing and does their own research should be steered to the actual good deal. If this client finds a sales person they can trust to not screw them over, they will indeed become repeat customers, and good ones, becasue trustworthy salespeople are few and far between - however, never break that trust, or you will lose them and their network of contacts.

Sales lesson of the day - know which group your client falls into, and give them what they truly want accordingly.

_________________
BE AS A LION IN THE PATH
Hate For Hate - And Ruth For Ruth,
Eye For Eye - And Tooth For Tooth.
Scorn For Scorn - And Smile For Smile,
Love For Love - And Guile For Guile.
War For War - And Woe For Woe,
Blood For Blood - And Blow For Blow.

QFT

And there it is - the crux.

For any example you can give (as I did), there are a bunch of other examples that can either refute, compound or expand on that example (as others did).

The Satanic part comes into it when you use your skills to be able to match the customer with the right price and benefit yourself by making the best possible deal. That might be inflating the price to an inflaterd ego, reducing the price for a shrewd buyer or smothering the customer with customer service for the repeat custom. All the points mentioned in above posts are worthy points and all are good.

But I wholeheartedly agree that the best sale technique is one that is matched to the customer.

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Determination. Perseverance. Resolution.