The Salesmans Guide: A How-to Approach

Retrain your brain to accept the following tip: You can’t earn when you’re in “knowing” mode. Salespeople can significantly increase their earnings when they stop saying and believing “I know why.”

In reality their “knowledge” is a guess created from vague statements from prospects (“we really like your presentation”) and clients (“your service is top notch”) that salespeople leave unexplored because they don’t want to be “pushy” or they “know why the client called.”

Keep in mind, the first rule of the prospect’s system is to withhold information (or lie, if you prefer). Prospects and clients are trained to keep the truth from salespeople because they’re mentally and emotionally protecting themselves.


2 primary reasons salespeople choose to “know” instead of exploring statements dropped by clients and prospects are:
1. They aren’t mentally and emotionally tough
2. They aren’t comfortable being vulnerable

Becoming mentally and emotionally tough doesn’t mean not having emotions or withholding emotions, but it does mean salespeople:

• Aren’t attached to the outcome – if their prospect says “no” or their client chooses not to expand their order, they don’t feel gutted.
• Don’t get emotionally involved in their meetings – as David Sandler said, “only the prospect may become emotionally involved in the sales interview.” Getting emotionally involved means a salesperson is focused on getting their needs met instead of helping their prospect resolve their pain.
• Separate their role from their identity – failing as a salesperson is just role failure. It doesn’t mean that salesperson is a failure as a person. Unfortunately, most of society equates role success or failure with an individual’s self-worth.

Being vulnerable doesn’t mean begging for business. Salespeople who are vulnerable:

• Don’t make assumptions – they take statements like, “it looks really good for you (to get our business)” and they find out what their prospect really means.
• Establish credibility – by helping their client design a solution to their problem instead of imposing a solution on them.
• Learn more and earn more – being vulnerable triggers a psychological reaction in a prospect to “rescue” the salesperson and share more information, which may lead to a larger problem for the salesperson to solve. 

By thinking they know instead of making time to be vulnerable and actually learning the truth behind their client’s vague statements, salespeople leave a lot of money on the table and reduce the length of client relationships. Get mentally and emotionally tough, get out of “knowing” mode and put more money in your pocket.