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After decades of studying elite sales professionals, and teaching and measuring sales skills to a broad cross-section of sales people, I’d like to pass on to you the 7 ways in which the elite performers assure their success. Use this article to identify and master the skills that you’ll require as part of your repertoire if you’re to truly gain total control of your earning capacity.

INCREDIBLE RAPPORT

Matching and mirroring (which you may have been taught) is merely the kindy level of rapport. Top performers have such incredible rapport skills that they’re often able to build rapport very rapidly, even with people who initially don’t like them.

If the online dating gurus ever got hold of this there’d be mayhem!

It probably wouldn’t do much good anyway, because they’d use it to try to manipulate, and manipulation is an automatic rapport breaker. To achieve the results you really want, these rapport skills must be used to enhance your relationships so that your level of connection with people is deep and genuine.

What’s the secret? Well partly of course it takes practice, but it’s important that this is correct practice. Some of the things you can do to increase your rapport skills are to take a leaf out of, believe it or not, the synchonised swimming teams!

Notice how they not only match their breathing, but they use eye contact to match their internal states? Sounds a bit “woo-woo”, I know, but it does work!

MIND READER EXTRAORDINAIRE!

An amazing level of rapport is one thing, but mind reading, where you actually know what your client is thinking, is a skill that borders on “spooky” but is certainly achievable.

These days you can use cutting edge accelerated learning techniques to move you toward a state of deep competence as quickly as possible, so that you learn to appreciate what your clients are thinking even before they realise it themselves.

How would you like to know the difference between “yes/no”, “like/dislike”, and “ready/not ready”? Useful?

You can certainly gain this skill, and again it takes practice! If you’re willing to spend time with buddies or business friends who’ll silently think of things that for example they “like”, and then of things that they “don’t like”, you’ll very quickly notice the set of cues that are the giveaway for each person. The more you practice, the more you can pick this up quickly even with people you’ve never met before.

THE *ONLY* PERSONALITY TRAITS THAT MATTER

Obviously health professionals are aware of a range of personality traits that are useful in therapy, but I can tell you now that most of them are unaware of what I’m about to share with you. And yet these traits, essential for sales people to understand, are THE most important traits when it comes to how people operate in the world, and how they undertake the decision making process!

Some people try to make out that these traits are “rocket science” and I’ve seen trainers charge thousands of dollars to teach them to people. The irony is that you already have the ability to recognise these traits IMMEDIATELY once you merely read and understand what they are. Almost everyone does.

Take a look at the following trait and you’ll see what I mean. This particular trait is called “match/mismatch”.

Have you ever met anyone who, the minute you said “black”, they said “white”? If you said it was a fine day, they’ve declared that indeed it was a pretty ordinary day, or even “what’s fine about it!”. That was probably a person who focuses on the differences, or habitually mismatches. Sometimes we refer to this type of person as a “polarity responder”, which is a technical term meaning “pain in the butt” :-).

Just as irritating as a mismatcher is a “similarity responder” who will find a way to agree with everything you say (it doesn’t mean they’ll follow through on that by the way). They perceive everything as familiar and “same”, and find it very difficult to disagree, or cope with things they don’t understand. They will fill in the blanks in their imagination, so that it looks just like something they already know.

Case Study

Fred the sales consultant is chatting with Macey the business owner and Macey seems “argumentative”. First she says that she has a problem with a certain manufacturing process, and then when Fred, carefully using her own terminology, refers to “the manufacturing problem” she denies that there is a problem! This woman is even mismatching her own statements. (Note from Christine: Yes! These people do actually exist! I met a very senior manager at a major utility company not that long ago who was exactly like this.)

Fred, realising that a mismatcher is one of the easiest people to influence (if you can be bothered), merely says, “Macey, I don’t know that you’d agree with me that there could be a better way to run that process, but I wonder if you wouldn’t find it easier to ”

And he can continue: “Macey, this option isn’t for everyone and it might not suit you in this case ….”. In fact Macey is probably the easiest client anyone could possibly sell to providing you understand her and respond to her the way that she requires. When you understand all the personality traits, you won’t make those relating mistakes again because you’ll be working in line with your client’s “style”.

MILLION DOLLAR QUESTIONS

Clients love these 3 little questions and elite sales performers are experts at asking them, and working with the answers.

What these questions do is to take a laser light to the client’s core values in relation to the buying process. And in addition, if you’re listening, the answers will include the very words the client needs to hear if they’re to decide to buy.

These questions are pure gold. They make purchase utterly compelling, and at the same time build a great relationship that fosters streams of referrals!

PRECISION CONTROL OF YOUR EARNINGS

Are you confident at the moment of hitting any sales goal you choose?

Top performers can pull in their desired income year after year because they know and use their own mathematical equation that leads inevitably to a certain sales result.

Possibly the first person to practise “scientific selling” was Frank Bettger (he wrote “How I Multiplied My Income and Happiness in Selling”). Selling activities may have changed slightly these days, but the science still holds.

You can calculate your own equation by making a list of all your direct and indirect selling activities along with the time it takes to perform “one unit” of each activity. That’s what’s leading to your current sales level. So you have your equation. However most people can improve that dramatically by eliminating or reducing activities that aren’t paying their way, and implementing others that are more effective. In all my years of sales training, I haven’t yet met a single sales person on commission who couldn’t at least double their income within 90 days of implementation of this method.

But to actually come through on this equation, you have to plan, document, track and analyse each activity. Otherwise you’re still flying blind, and you’re not being accountable - not even to yourself. If you are prepared to do these things then I’m excited for you, because you’re nearly there!

MAKING FEAR OR DOUBT VANISH!

Often people absolutely know what to do, have the skills to do it extremely well, and really want to do it, but for some reason they retain some niggling discomfort (or abject fear!) and find that they sabotage their success with inaction. They just can’t bring themselves to do it, or do it in a consistent way, in order to get the results they crave.

So what can you do if you know there’s no logical reason for you to NOT make those calls, or NOT take up that speaking invitation, but you still perspire madly every time you imagine yourself doing it?

For several years we’ve had available an incredible technique to eliminate these types of fears and doubts literally overnight (including stuttering, by the way) but very few people have known about it.

One of the most powerful of all these techniques is “NeuroStim”. It’s capable of eliminating depression, chronic pain, fear and anxiety in just days, and sometimes even overnight.

YOUR PAYOFF FOR NETWORKING STRATEGICALLY!

Up until a few years ago we would always recommend that our students and clients join a business networking organisation and we ourselves worked tirelessly to educate members and their organisations to network more ethically and effectively.

Sadly, we don’t see any evidence at all that the organisations understand the principles of effective business networking.

Nowadays we advise our clients and students to avoid these organisations whenever possible. They are half-baked examples of what networking should be about and our people are far better off forming their own business networks among trusted business friends. If they do this the right way, they’ll enjoy unprecedented success, including superior peer-mentoring, joint venture agreements, referrals, advocacy, and sharing of expertise and resources. And they can do it all in business hours.

The advantages of turning your back on the networking organisations and building your own private network are gigantic. You’ll save time, money and effort, and you no longer have to tolerate boring or rude networking practices. You’ll no longer rob yourself, family or friends of time that should be spent with them. You’ll have REAL friends in business who enrich your life personally and professionally.

CAN YOU PUT THIS TOGETHER AND REACH THE TOP?

Of course you can always learn more or enhance existing skills when it comes to your ability to communicate, but if you’ll only master these 7 keys skills you’ll soon be amongst the elite and you’ll certainly deserve your place there!