Transcription
These are the nine strategies that transformed me from being truly terrified of rejection to closing deals with confidence. I picked up some of these strategies by working with the top sales experts in the world, and others I picked up the hard way, which was going from making $55,000 a year to millions of dollars a year today through learning the art of selling. So let's dive into the nine most effective sales strategies that can change the way you sell and change the way you live. Ladies, the first strategy is for you: It is time to flip the script. Sales isn't gross; it is impactful. It's only gross if you don't actually believe in your product.
Think about being a car salesperson. You would feel really gross about being a car salesperson if you're selling cars to people who can't afford them. Of course, you're going to feel bad about yourself and you're going to think that sales isn't for you. But now think about yourself as if you are the car salesperson for a Lamborghini dealership. You're bought into the product, you know that the product is premium, you also know that you are not selling this product to somebody who can't afford it. So the art of the sale is going to feel a lot more interesting, it's going to feel fun because you know that you're selling product that you actually believe in. This makes sales not gross because what you're now doing is solving that person's problem. So get sold on the product, and if you aren't currently sold on the product, sell a different product. Don't work at a place where you do not actually believe to your core that the product helps people because when you believe that it helps people, it changes everything. Think about it like you are truly helping somebody make a decision that gets them closer to achieving the life that they want.
My single favorite quote from Grant Cardone, who is a master of all masters at sales, he says: "To the extent that you are sold, you will sell." But if you are not sold on the product, it's why your sales numbers are going to be bad. So whenever you're thinking that you're a bad salesperson, that the product doesn't work, just remember, let that little trigger go off: To the extent that you are sold, you will sell. And then the reverse is true: To the extent you aren't sold, you won't sell. So how do we get you sold on your offering so that then you can sell? When you are bought into your product, that is how you feel every day selling it. You're helping people make a good decision, get closer to their dream outcome, their ideal scene for themselves, and you are the conduit to allow that to actually happen.
But in order to help someone else achieve the life that they want, step two is: You have to get sold on you. You can't sell others on your vision if you aren't sold on you first. The first time I realized that I wasn't sold on myself was when I was sitting in a conference room and somebody asked the question: "Why would somebody buy from us versus our competition?" I didn't have a good answer because the reality was, they should be buying from the competition because the competition works harder, the competition knows more about the customer's problem, and does actually create a better solution. But as soon as I realized that that was the problem and that I wasn't sold on me and how I had helped solve that problem, I just prioritized solving those problems and I took more responsibility so that I could actually be sold on the product, but also be sold on myself.
See, when you know that you're not putting your all into something, you know that you've told yourself you want to wake up early, you want to work out every day, you want to eat right, and you're not doing those things, you're not showing up as your best self. It's going to be really hard to get other people to buy in on themselves and make investments in themselves because you know that you already let yourself off the hook. But if you didn't let yourself off the hook in life, if you actually held yourself to the highest standards that you have for yourself, you would then hold other people to those standards as well. So the biggest hack in sales, outside of having a great product and believing in your product, is actually getting sold on you.
Well, for me personally, I had to get sold on working out every single day, showing up as the person that I wanted to be instead of the person that I was at the time. I had to have a totally different vocabulary and learn words that I didn't know and didn't feel comfortable with and kind of felt like a little bit of an imposter around. Because if I was able to hold myself to this new higher standard and get sold on myself, I was no longer willing to accept no from other people because I wasn't accepting no for myself. You have to know why you should be trusted, and ultimately, this comes down to trusting yourself. I know that when I wake up every morning, I can trust me. I can uphold my commitments, I can follow through with people, I can do the things that I say that I'm going to do because I am the person that I tell people I am. So if you aren't sold on all of those pieces, it's going to be very easy for you to see that your sales numbers are off.
The good news is you can start small, and you can start today. Start by keeping promises to yourself. You tell yourself that you're going to get your butt in the gym at 5:30 tomorrow morning, get your freaking butt in the gym. You tell yourself that you are going to wake up at the first time your alarm goes off and you are not going to hit snooze, don't hit the snooze button. It is these little tiny choices that you make every single day that either build into your confidence that you can trust you, or erode your confidence that you can trust you. So start small.
Once you're sold on you and your product, strategy number three is: Start offering solutions. Everybody on this planet has a problem. Do they want to be more beautiful? Do they want to look younger? Do they want to come across as more classy, more elevated? Whatever it is that they have a problem around, there are solutions on this planet. So when you think about your role in sales, it is as simple as you just asking what their problem is, and understanding their problem, and truly providing the right solution for their stated problem.
So I like to think about this when it comes to somebody who wants to buy a car. Well, what is the problem that they're solving? You see, before I bought my first car when I was 20 years old, I had my grandma's hand-me-down, and my grandma's hand-me-down was a gorgeous 1993 Buick Century. It was silver, it was like a couch in the back, it's very fluffy, and rode like a grandma's car. It's honestly today why I still drive like I'm a grandma because I drove on a grandma's car for the first four years of me being able to drive. I would show up to my job making $8.32 an hour with all of these cars in the parking lot that were so nice and so beautiful and knew they were made within the last decade, and then there was me who had my Buick Century, and I was so embarrassed by it.
So when I did get the chance to buy this car, the salesperson understood the pain point I was trying to solve. It wasn't just because I wanted a car for the purpose of getting to and from work or to and from my friend's house; it was because I wanted to no longer feel embarrassed. But at least I wasn't showing up being mortified by the car that I was driving. So I'm so thankful that the person who sold me my first car, they did their job. They asked me all of the relevant questions so that I could properly figure out what car was in my budget, what car would no longer make me feel the way that I felt, and I was so proud. I showed up different every day to work cruising around in my little three Series BMW. I was honestly through the moon.
So think about this: When you're selling somebody, they have a problem. It might not be that they want a car. Maybe they want to lose weight, they feel really insecure in their body, they don't like the way that they show up to their work every single day, they don't like the way that they show up to their significant other every single night, they feel just a lot of shame. You're solving that problem, that pain point, and you can only get there by asking really great questions. Ask yourself what the customer needs, and then think about how your solution can make their life better, easier, and more fulfilling.
The fourth strategy: Bust a common myth. You see, you don't have to be aggressive to be good at sales. You actually just have to be authentic. One of my beliefs around sales is that the customer's money is in better hands with me than it is with them. This has gotten me over having difficult conversations where I'm fact-finding with customers and I hear their pain, to be able to move them through that process so that they can get the results on the other side by making an investment. See, if they don't make the investment, they're not going to get the change, and I know that I can help them. I actually believe in my product and I believe in me. So their money is better off in my hands because I have success stories, I have things that I can point them to to say, "If you do this, this is what's going to happen for you inside your business." And because of that confidence, I'm able to go through a sales cycle with somebody and really move them through all of the fears, all of their self-limiting beliefs, because I am sold on my product, and then I don't have to be aggressive in the process. I'm just working them through the steps so they can actually get their desired results.
And see, this is why women are better at sales because you can solve these problems with empathy while also holding them accountable. I put myself in my client's shoes. I don't need to be aggressive when I just ask myself this question: Has anyone truly held this person accountable to their goals? Most of the time, I can answer that wholeheartedly and say, "No." No one has ever cared about this person enough so they're going to make this investment, and in exchange, I'm going to care about them. I'm going to get them the results that they're looking for, and it has the opportunity to entirely change that person's life. So there's no need to be aggressive around here. We just listen, we back a great product, we get sold on ourselves, and we help people solve their problems.
Next is the fit strategy, which is all about rejection and how hearing "no" makes you feel. But here's the deal: This is a question I ask myself: Are they actually telling me no, or are they just telling me that there is something that they don't yet know about how my product, my service, is the answer to their problem? And it's my job to build this bridge for them so that I can help them see what they don't currently know so that they move forward. If the prospect says no, don't take it personally. It just means that you haven't fully made known the value of your offer. What does the buyer not know? Instead of you just talking about the value, what about a full demonstration? If you're selling skincare and you show me how you can put the under-eye patches on, and all of a sudden the little wrinkles underneath my eyes just, they vanish, I'm going to get sold very differently than if you just tell me that it's going to reduce my under-eye wrinkles. There's different things that you can do in the sales process to get the client to actually know more about your product. That is on you as a salesperson. But luckily, as a badass woman in business, it's really easy for us to think about different ways that we can show people what the successful end product actually looks like.
My theory on why women hate rejection is we are normally chased. It's something very biological, something that is very normal. And so it's actually abnormal for a woman to accept rejection because we're so used to just being pursued. That's how we were made. Well, if you can get over this, and I believe you can, you will be lethal in a sales environment because a woman who is smart and confident and can take rejection and keep showing up, deadly. You are a freaking gangster. And just by you learning this skillset alone, you will make so much money in your career because so few are willing to go through that little tiny period of discomfort through the rejection phase to actually get what they want, which is on the other side.
The cool thing about sales is it's actually not personal. It's something that is not you. So you are not being rejected; the product is being rejected. So how do you make the product more appealing to the person that you were trying to sell it to? And take yourself and your ego and all of your fears and worries about rejection and just remove it from the equation because the good news, it's not about you.
Next up, strategy 6 is: Realizing that everything that you want in life is on the other side of a "yes." My favorite Grant Cardone book called "Sell or Be Sold." You are either being sold by somebody else's ideas, what their concept of what your life should look like, or you were selling them on where we're going to dinner tonight, where you live, do you live close to your family? Every single thing in life is a sale. So are you selling, or are you being sold? I realized that for much of my life, I was just being sold. Seven years ago, I realized I was a victim in my own life. I was being constantly sold on what my significant other wanted to do, who my parents wanted me to become, who I thought I should be, and never really looked at myself to say, "What do I want? Where do I want to go?" And in this process of listening to other people and getting angry that I wasn't where I wanted to be, I realized that because I wasn't sold on me and I didn't know where I was going, it was very unlikely that I was ever going to get there. But that first sale started with me.
So when you think about your customer, are you sold on where they're going? See, I think one of the greatest gifts that any salesperson can have is them believing that their customer's whole life can change through working with them. The way that they view themselves, the way that they walk into rooms can actually be impacted by the product or the service that you're selling to them. Just remember that when you are the one selling, you're getting somebody to a destination that they might not believe is possible for them to go. It is your job as the salesperson to get them over all of the potential roadblocks, all the potential traffic delays, all of the accidents that could happen along the way from getting to where they're at to where they want to go. You are that bridge. You are that person saying, "You've got this. I will be your GPS. I will help you. We can overcome this." This is important to learn because you are in the driver's seat. If you really want to be a great salesperson, you have to take on that responsibility of being in the driver's seat and having more confidence in where your client can go than they might have in themselves.
Strategy 7 is something you have definitely heard your parents say over and over again, which is: Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, and just keep practicing. I remember when I first tackled this idea of sales, and I use this tool called Cardone University. C University provides 15-minute sales trainings where you can learn how to ideally overcome objections and get the deal done. Back when I wanted to learn the sales game, I started training every single day. I would watch 15 minutes every day on some training topic, whether it was learning how to greet somebody, how to fact-find and really understand what their motive was, how to ask really great questions in order to overcome objections to close the deal. See, I needed tools in every single one of those areas. So I set up the discipline to train every single day, 7 days a week, for at least 15 minutes. And this training allowed me to go into every conversation ahead of time thinking, "How am I going to sell in this conversation?" It could have been the most mundane conversation, maybe it's with my husband, and he and I are deciding where to go to eat. I would decide ahead of time: I want to go to the F place. I feel like Vietnamese food. I do not want to negotiate. So I would start the conversation knowing that I had this intention to go to F, eat some great yummy soup. And when I would go to have the conversation with him, I set my intention: We're going to go get F. And when he's like, "No, I don't want soup every night," I would practice the overcoming of the objection. So it got me in this habit of every single day practicing what I was learning so that I could actually improve on what I was trying to get better at.
You have to practice if you want to be great at sales. And here's the deal: You do not want to practice on your customers. Ideally, you are practicing with your friends, with your co-workers, with your family, with your children, with your spouse. You can do so much in such a short period of time to get really great at sales if you just commit to practicing every single day and using the tiniest little opportunities as your shot to say, "This is what I want out of this conversation. This is where I'm going to drive this conversation to. I'm going to handle this objection in this way." I might even give the other person an objection to give me so then I can practice handling the objection. And you start to create a game out of everything that happens in your life.
That brings us to the eighth strategy, which is: To know when to stop selling. You see, too much talk can absolutely unsell your customer. Have you ever been to your favorite restaurant? You show up there, you're excited to order your favorite appetizer. For me, that'd probably be meatballs, and then the next dish is going to be your favorite pasta. But you know that instead of having the normal pasta, they have the special pasta on the side that you can request. And then for dessert, you've just been salivating all day thinking about your favorite dessert that you're going to order at your favorite restaurant. And when you sit down at your favorite restaurant, the waiter comes over, and the waiter is nice, friendly, maybe a little bit new, and the waiter proceeds to tell you about the specials and orient you to the menu for five minutes. This is an example of overselling. I was already sold on every single thing prior to even showing up. I was even going to add in a cocktail just to have an extra little spice to my evening. But now my mood is ruined because I've just had to listen to somebody try to tell me all these things that I already know when my mind was already made up.
This is one of the most important questions that you can ask in any sale, and ideally, you do it as quickly as possible because you do not want to oversell somebody. The question is: Have you heard enough to make a decision? It will amaze you how quickly you were able to move through deals because you asked the simple question. And I take zero credit from this because Grant Cardone himself taught me this. I will never forget the very first time that I was in a sales situation with Grant. It was 30 seconds into this presentation, and it was supposed to be an hour-long presentation, and he slams on the table without the other person knowing because it was a virtual call, and he says, "Mute it. Mute it." And so one person's still making the presentation, I mute it, and we're like smiling, and he says, "Ask them: Have you heard enough to make a decision?" And I look at him and I'm like, "You just just hit no." He's like, "Ask them." So we unmuted the call and we said, "So, have you heard enough to make a decision?" And the person said, "No." And we continued on with the presentation. 45 seconds later, he hits it again and he says, "Ask." So he asks, "So, have you heard enough to make a decision?" And the person said, "Yeah, I'd like to move forward." And I was shocked because it worked. The person didn't want to hear all the things. A lot of the time, you don't want to know all the information when you're buying something. So ask the question: Have you heard enough to make a decision? And your conversions on your sales will go up, and you'll think it's magic, but it wasn't. It was just Grant Cardone. People have to know what they want right away, so don't ignore the signs.
Number nine is our final strategy to mastering the art of selling, which is: Accepting your failure. You can completely mess up, then recover, and still get the deal. I cannot tell you how many deals I have blown. I've messed up the person's name, I've been so nervous that I didn't do the demo correctly, I fumbled around and showed how nervous I was, and never even asked for the cloth because I was just so embarrassed. And guess what? If you can hold this one piece of data to be true, it will change your life when it comes to your confidence in the sales process. No one thing blows a deal. You can mess up, you can make mistakes, it is okay, and you can still actually get the sale. You could even be too aggressive with somebody and put a little bit too much pressure on them. I know we're not super aggressive, but sometimes you can be like, "You just have to do this, you have to do it today because it's going to help you." Maybe it was a mistake, but the mistake doesn't have to define that that relationship doesn't ultimately do business with you. So hold this to be true: That no one thing blows a deal. And then you're going to be able to walk into these conversations with your shoulders back knowing, "I can be a human being. I can make a mistake, and even if I make a mistake, it doesn't have to blow the deal because I can still get the job done."
Think back to a time when you've been in a department store. You were trying on a pair of shoes, maybe it was a shirt, and you really liked it, but you didn't like it enough to move forward at that moment. And then the salesperson maybe put a little pressure on you and wanted you to buy, and you got frustrated, you left, you didn't want to buy it any longer, you moved away. The next day, an event comes up where you need those shoes to match the dress. So what do you do? You go back and you buy it. Because the fact that that person might have been a little bit too pushy or said something that potentially even offended you isn't the thing that stops you. People change their minds constantly. You are not the same person that you were yesterday. You're not the same person that you were an hour ago. Honestly, you aren't even the same person as you were when you started this video. So don't think that your customer is the same person because they have new considerations, they have new opportunities. No one thing blows a deal, and never overthink your mistakes.
These are the nine strategies you need to start mastering sales. And if you love this video, check out my next video on brutally honest business advice for women.