Title: Successful Selling in 21 Steps
Author: W. L. Halberstadt
Year of Publication: 1958
Publisher: Exposition Press Inc.
Length: 114 Pages & 35,236
Words Status: Public Domain in the United States and countries following the rule of the shorter term.
Claim your copy of “Successful Selling in 21 Steps” now by clicking the above link. You will receive a scanned copy of the original book in editable word document format together with a pdf file and flat e-cover in five different sizes.
This book is in the public domain and copyright-free which means there are no usage restrictions and you can do with it whatever you want to. Sell it, give it away, turn it into an audio book, rewrite or edit it, use it for ideas or as content for another publication, etc. The list is endless! You can obviously also use it for personal use… Print your own copy, make notes on the pages and highlight sentences that inspire you!
Index:
Introduction: How Do You Rate?
1 Selling as a Vocation
2 The Important Thing
3 Organizing the Sales Talk
4 Finding the Prospect
5 The Ancient Tribe of Alibiers
6 “Horse Sense”
7 Self-Discipline
8 A Super-Salesman in a Tough Territory
9 The Man God Bragged About
10 “This One Thing I Do…”
11 Mastery of Things—and Self
12 The Eternal Conflict
13 The Sin of Failure
14 “Steadfastly-Minded”
15 Fill Your Tray
16 This I Believe
17 “Reech” Americans
18 You Need “Abrasives”
19 You Can’t Run Away
20 “Opportunity Means Nothing to a Man With Empty Pockets”
21 “Learning to Be Somebody”
Extract of book:
INTRODUCTION: HOW DO YOU RATE?
It has long been my conviction that the dominant factor in success is the set of mental habits possessed by the individual. Of no vocation is this truer than that of the salesman. “As a man thinketh . . .” applies to him in an all-important way. The techniques and skills, methods of approach, demonstration and closing are matters of demanding study and practice, but these things are cold, mechanical, wooden and ineffective except as they are warmed, energized and implemented by the dynamics of a positive personality. And positive personality is never found apart from deep conviction, genuine belief in the fundamental verities, the “copybook virtues” known and honored by men and women of character in all generations.
This conviction was strengthened in me some time ago when there came to hand a report of a questionnaire circulated among the 250 members of the Chicago Sales Executives Club. These men are “top brass” in the sales departments of big business. They have responsibility for the distribution of their firm’s product, have in some cases hundreds, even thousands, of sales managers and salesmen under their guidance and direction. The recruitment, training and management of these forces is their daily concern.
The question asked these sales executives was: What are the qualities or traits of character you value most in salesmen? Herewith is the list they offered, the traits being stated in the order of importance attached to them by these top-flight sales executives. There is food for thought here. Note for instance that “persuasiveness” is number 19. Most people would list the art of persuasion as perhaps synonymous with salesmanship. Here it is at the end of the list.
1. Dependability was chosen as the most important.
2. Integrity was next. With this trait the salesman is incapable either of being false to the trust his company places in him or to the real interests of his customer.
3. Knowledge of product is one of the three fundamentals of success in the field of selling.
4. Self-management. Perhaps no vocation gives a man a greater degree of latitude. He must be a good “boss” for himself and exact a high degree of self-discipline.
5. Work organization is efficiency in self-management. Much of a salesman’s time is wasted by the prospect. He must guard the balance jealously and make every minute count.
6. Sincerity excludes falsification of every shade. It must be real, few can “pretend” with success.
7. Initiative is the salesman’s spark plug. Read Elbert Hubbard’s little essay on this.
8. Industriousness is devotion to the job, never being unemployed during work hours (and never being “triflingly” employed).
9. Acceptance of responsibility, for the car, for the sales material, records, samples and above all for the company’s good name and the customer’s good will.
10. Understanding of buyer motives, this being another of the big three fundamentals of selling.
11. Sales ethics. No longer is the slogan caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) but caveat vendator (let the seller beware).
12. Judgment is not inherited. It can be developed as a habit. Logic is a subject that should be a “must” for salesmen.
13. Care of health, mental, physical, spiritual, financial.
14. Courtesy is more than politeness. It is consideration for others, deference to their opinions, their rank, their sex, their age.
15. Determination is a dogged adherence to a carefully worked out and settled program and purpose. The will to carry through. Unwillingness to compromise with anything less than your best performance.
16. Aggressiveness requires self-confidence and the language of assurance in all interviews. It is pressure applied without offensiveness.
17. Friendliness involves warmth of feeling, a positive type of cordiality that does not involve back-slapping or wise-cracking.
18. Resourcefulness is that without which—few sales. Wide knowledge, curiosity, retentive memory, wide-awakeness. Quick thinking in the clinches.
19. Persuasiveness goes beyond the realm of reasoning, an appeal to feelings, desires, emotions.
20. Appreciation of selling as a profession and as the road to personal success. Awareness of the fact that the field of “distribution” offers more in money, satisfactions, opportunity for service, and personal growth in all of the inner virtues and faculties than any other calling, especially more than anything in the field of “production.”
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