Making The Sale...

[Dien Rice]

A little while ago I saw the documentary, "Salesman". It's a documentary where they followed Bible salesman around in the late 1960s. You really see the ups and the downs, the good and the bad of selling "door to door"...

Now, I love great salespeople! They're the people who "sell" to you when you don't realize it... Anyway, having done some face-to-face selling myself in the past, I know it's not always the easiest path to travel... And can even be "frightening" (the same way getting up on stage can be fearful)!

Anyway, in "Salesman", you could see some people were terrible salespeople. (The main guy, Paul, wasn't doing too well.) But you also noticed his demeanor... He was down in the dumps, moaning about his problems in selling, making excuses, and so on... Whereas, those who were selling well, were pretty chipper!

Now, you might say that the chipper salesmen were happy because they were making sales! And Paul was down in the dumps because he wasn't making sales... But...

What if it was the other way around?

Maybe the happy salesmen were making sales because they were cheerful and happy! (And enthusiastic about their product!) And what if Paul wasn't doing too well because he was down in the dumps... No matter how you try to mask it, it's hard to mask how you really feel completely...

Anyway, what I'm coming to is this interesting quote from Zig Ziglar I just came across...

Sometimes I love to browse through bookshops. You can browse through various books and learn a lot, and get a lot of ideas. It's fun! (Though it can also be expensive if you have a habit of buying all the books... As I tend to do!) Anyway, that's how I found this quote.

Here's the quote from Zig Ziglar... He says...

Selling is essentially a transference of feeling.

If I (the salesman) can make you feel about my product the way I feel about my product, you are going to buy my product, if there is any way in the world you can come up with the money.

Now in order to transfer a feeling, you've got to have that feeling.

(From Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale, p. 83.)

Anyway... Any thoughts on this, or experiences?

Cheers

Dien