Selling Boldly

Applying the New Science of Positive Psychology to Dramatically Increase Your Confidence, Happiness, and Sales

Alex Goldfayn

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119436355
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER!

IF YOU'RE IN SALES, FEAR HAS COST YOU MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, AND THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.

Fear is the reason most salespeople don't like to pick up the phone (salespeople average just four hours per week on the phone, and our job is to talk to humans!).

Fear is the reason we don't ask for the business more, even though our customers want to buy from us.

Fear is the reason we don't offer our customers additional products and services, even though they would love to buy more from us.

This book deals with that fear.

You will learn exactly how to overcome this destructive fear in sales, and replace it with confidence, optimism, gratitude, joy, and proactive sales work. These are the powerful principles in the new field of positive psychology which are transforming how we work and succeed. Selling Boldly is the first book that leverages positive psychology to help you sell more.

You'll also learn a series of fast, simple sales-growth techniques—like how to add on to existing orders; and how to close 20% more quotes and proposals instantly; and how to properly ask for and receive referrals—that will grow your sales…dramatically and quickly.

Alex Goldfayn's clients grow their sales by 10-20% annually, every year, as long as they apply his simple approaches.

YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT TO DO I am not going to teach you much in this book that you don't already know.

You're a professional salesperson. You do this for a living. You know, for example, that testimonials and referrals are among the best ways we have to grow sales, right? But do you ask for them enough? Most people don't.

You know that calling a customer on the phone is more effective than emailing her, but you still often revert to email.

You know your customers buy other products and services that you can help them with, but you don't ask them about these products. You'd like to help them, and they would like more of your help — that is why they've been with you for five or ten or twenty years — but nevertheless we don't ask them.

There is a difference between knowing what to do, and actually doing it.

I know you know.

With Selling Boldly, we start to do what we already know. We will cover what keeps us from doing these things (fear), how to overcome it (by listening to your happy customers), and how to implement these simple but powerful sales growth techniques (by briefly planning them, also doing them).

Because sales growth comes from doing, not knowing.

Today, we start doing.

And growing.

These approaches are laid out in this book, in precise detail, for you to implement in your own work.

Alex doesn't hold anything back in this manual for selling more.

What's the secret to selling more?

There is no secret.

There is no magic bullet.

There is only the work.

There are only the mindsets, and the communications.

In Selling Boldly, Alex teaches readers how to attain these mindsets, and how to implement these communications, so that sales have no choice but to grow!

PART I
Fear Is the Greatest Enemy of Sales … and Positive Psychology Is the Antidote

1
The Single Greatest Killer of Sales

Want to grow sales? Here is an executive summary of this book in two sentences and two steps:

• The first step is to know how good you are so that you gain confidence, positivity, and boldness.
• The second step is to communicate with customers and prospects more, because the more we communicate, the more we sell. (The less we communicate, the less we sell. It never works the other way. We can never communicate less, and sell more.)

That's the book in a nutshell. If you keep reading, you'll learn in deep detail how to dramatically increase your positivity, confidence, and joy by listening to your happy customers—and then, simply, offering to help them more.

That's how easy it is to grow sales.

We begin with three stories that lay out the single greatest killer of sales growth.

The Coffee Shop

I was at the airport in Minneapolis, ordering an iced coffee, and the young woman behind the counter asked me if I would like a bottle of water with that.

This stopped me in my tracks because I teach all of my clients this technique—I call it the did you know question—and although it's an incredibly simple question that requires only a few seconds, almost nobody ever asks a question like this. Anywhere, ever.

I asked her, “Do they teach you to ask this question?”

“Yes, they do,” she said. “It's a part of our training.”

“How many people buy a bottle of water?”

You know what she said?

“Almost everybody.”

Guess how much the water cost? Five dollars!

The coffee?

It cost $3.

It's amazing.

With this simple question, this coffee shop nearly triples its sales, from $3 to $8.

With water!

Was I mad at her for trying to sell me a $5 bottle of water?

Of course not. She was trying to help me. And like everybody else she asks, I know that a $5 bottle of water is absurd.

So how was she being helpful?

I was getting on an airplane. I needed water, anyway.

If I didn't buy it from her, in a single transaction, I would have to take my coffee, and my rolling luggage down the terminal to a gift shop and procure my bottle of water. I'd have to set down my luggage, and my coffee, take a water out of the cooler, risk dropping my coffee on the floor because I'm now holding both the water and the coffee in one hand, as I try to get to the other, new, checkout line. Once I would get to the front of the line, I would have to set everything down again—luggage, coffee, and water—and pay. Again. And how much money have I saved? A dollar or two? Maybe? I could use that time to relax, or make a proactive phone call to a customer to check in (much more on this to come throughout the book).

The young checkout person at the coffee shop offered me water, which (1) saved me time, and (2) allowed me to complete my beverage acquisitions in one transaction. I valued that. I appreciated it. So, apparently, did nearly everybody else she asked. Remember, she asks everybody, and almost everybody buys the water.

And so, I ask you: What is your bottle of water?

What can you sell to your customers, who have been buying the same products and services from you for years, decades maybe, without considering what else they can buy from you? Right now, today, your customers are buying from the competition products or services they could be buying from you. These are products and services they should be buying from you. In fact, your customers would like to buy these things from you. After all, they've been with you for all these years for a reason. They're very happy doing business with you. And everybody knows one purchase order is better than two or three or four. They want to buy more from you and, of course, you would like to sell them additional products.

But none of that is possible, because they don't know.

We don't tell them what else they can buy.

And they're too busy to know. Or ask. They simply assume they can only buy from us that which they have bought for years. And we assume that that is all they need! They niche us, and we niche them.

They would buy, if we would ask. But we do not, so they do not.

In this book, in Chapter 27, I will teach you exactly how to ask your customers to buy your bottles of water.

The Insulation Contractor

Several years ago, my family moved into a new home.

We had a room over the garage, and it was colder than the rest of the house.

So I called three insulation companies. I'd never bought insulation services before.

They all came out, did some testing, and sent me their quotes.

I received quotes from all three of them.

But only one of the guys followed up with me after he sent the quote.

Guess who got the business?

That's right, the guy who followed up.

Guess who was the most expensive?

Right again, the guy who followed up.

So why did he get the business?

By following up with me, was he bothering me?

Was he annoying me?

Was he taking up my time when he called?

No, none of those things.

When he followed up, he was showing me he cared.

The other guys did the opposite.

When they did not follow up, they were sho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• PART I: Fear Is the Greatest Enemy of Sales … and Positive Psychology Is the Antidote
• PART II: The 10 Critical Mindset Shifts for Dramatic Sales Growth
• PART III: How to Develop the Selling Boldly Mindset
• PART IV: From Mindset to Technique: Powerful Sales Growth Actions
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: 100 Questions to Ask Your Customers and Prospects (and Yourself)
• Index
• End User License Agreement