Becoming a Successful Salesman: 5 Helpful Tips

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Little Red Book of Selling" by Jeffrey Gitomer. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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What distinguishes a successful salesman from an average one? How do some salespeople manage to consistently close sale after sale, cashing in commissions, while others struggle to hit their minimum?

Many salespeople, especially at the beginning of their career, erroneously think that pushing the prospect to buy is the best way to clinch the deal. And while the aggressive approach might work from time to time, it’s not going to bring you consistent sales. Rather than pushing the customer to buy what you have, your job as a salesperson is capitalizing on the desire to buy—that is, making the customer want to buy your product.

In this article, we’ll discuss a few tips on how to do just that.

Understanding the Psychology of Selling

Many salesmen think that pushing prospects to buy their product is the way to go. But manipulation won’t get you very far in your sales career. To become successful at sales, you must learn how to capitalize on the desire to buy, and that requires an understanding of the reasons people buy.

You may think you already understand why people buy, but you don’t if you’re experiencing any of the following in your sales process:

Customers object to your price.
They request that you provide a bid or proposal.
They won’t return your calls.
They say they’re satisfied with their current vendor.
You think sales are slow because the economy’s slow.

All of these experiences indicate you haven’t created an atmosphere conducive to buying by focusing on the reasons people buy. For example, if you’re wrangling over price, you’ve failed to convince the customer of your product’s value and fit for her, which are among the reasons people buy.

Here are the top reasons why people buy:

They like the salesperson. Further, they trust, believe in, have confidence in, and feel comfortable with the sales rep. (The sales cycle starts with the customer liking and trusting the salesperson, proceeds to buying, and continues with an ongoing relationship.)
They view the salesperson and company as different from competitors.
They see the salesperson as a resource and as someone who’s trying to help them.
They see value in the product or service they’re buying; they believe it will increase their productivity and profit.
The product or service fits their needs.
They view the price as fair for the value they’re getting, although it may not be the lowest available.

To find out specifically why your customers buy from you, ask them. The following sales tips will help you build on customers’ existing buying reasons to create an atmosphere conducive to buying.

Tip 1: Develop Your Brand

Potential customers “buy” the salesperson first, then buy what you’re selling. They buy your knowledge and expertise, the value you provide, your character, integrity, trustworthiness, and so on. To establish your knowledge and value and make them widely known, you need to develop a strong personal brand.

When you have a strong brand, customers are loyal to you, prospects call you, you get appointments with higher-ups more easily, and you get more “yeses” to meetings and sales than your competitors do. You attract sales success.

Personal branding isn’t difficult, although training classes often make it seem that way—it just takes hard work. Branding is increasing people’s awareness of you and your strengths. It encompasses putting your name on everything you do, with the goals of:

Establishing yourself as an expert, resource, and innovator in your field
Earning a positive reputation in the business community that accrues to your company and product
Being seen as a leader in your field and the community
Differentiating yourself from others in your field
Creating demand indirectly for your product or service

Tip 2: Use Humor

Making people laugh relaxes them and creates an atmosphere conducive to buying. Laughing together is a form of agreement or approval, and agreement is a step toward selling. Besides helping you make the sale, humor builds customer relationships by facilitating friendship and respect.

To improve your humor, study humor, especially if you aren’t naturally funny. Here are some ways to learn to be funnier:

Pay attention to what happens to you so you can reference funny events in jokes.
Watch comedians on TV. Study their delivery and the audience’s reaction.
Read joke books.
Listen to children, who are naturally funny.
Practice jokes with family and friends.

Safe topics to joke about include things kids say and do, traffic, and lines from television shows. In general, pick something that’s:

Funny to you, so your joke is natural rather than forced.
Personal: Poke fun at one of your personal qualities or features, but never make fun of others.
Clean: Never make crude, ethnic, or gender jokes.

Tip 3: Be Creative

Along with humor, creativity will make you and your sales pitch stand out and be remembered. Here are four ways in which creativity can get a client’s attention:

1) At the start of a sales call, ask a smart, unexpected question instead of blathering on about your company and product. For example, ask: “How much does a lost hour of productivity cost your company?” or “How would you know whether you were overpaying for printing?”

2) Identify your customer contact points and change them so they’re distinctive—including the voicemails you leave, your cover letter, your phone greeting or voicemail message, your business cards, and so on. Fixing your voicemail message is the most important task because it can help you get new customers and act as word-of-mouth advertising (if you have a unique message, people tell others about it). Here are some ways to create a memorable message:

Becoming a Successful Salesman: 5 Helpful Tips