The Secret of Selling Anything: A road map to success for the salesman… who is not aggressive, who is not a “smooth talker,” and who is not an extrovert

The successful salesman realizes something that others do not understand: Every individual is already motivated. Your job as a salesman is to find the prospect’s motivation and demonstrate to him that your product will help him get what he wants.

When the prospect has come to you, the basic question you’re asking is, “What is it you want to accomplish through the purchase of this product?”

Here we can see the secret of successful salesmanship. If there is one rule, one key, one basic law that tells us what you have to do to make a sale, then this must be it: Find this prospect’s motivation and appeal to it.

He buys what the product will accomplish.

There isn’t any way to sell him anything until you know what it is the prospect is trying to acquire. So begin by discovering his motivation.

Selling is easy for me now. I enjoy it because I understand it and control it. No longer is it a mysterious game to be played with unwilling prospects. It revolves around motivation.

Unless you can demonstrate to others that your service is in their self-interest, they are not going to give up their resources to you.

don’t mean that you should put it as bluntly as “What motivates you, Mr. Jones?”

Probably 99 out of 100 salesmen try to motivate their prospects. And that’s their mistake. You’re not capable of motivating anyone – no matter how persuasive you think you are. Let’s look at the example I gave in the last chapter. How did I manage to motivate that prospect? The answer is that I didn’t. He was already motivated. I merely asked him w