I listened to the audiobook version.
I didn’t like the focus on:
• People who like to save money are cheap – spending money on quality goods that last is wise, but buying in to the ideology of consumerism and purchasing things you don’t need and can’t afford on credit is irresponsible, a leading cause of stress, unhappiness and unlikely to be the right financial decision for anyone who wants to be a responsible parent
• Meditation is pointless nonsense – I assume Grant has not read any of the hundreds of peer reviewed medical research papers on the benefits of meditation
• More money is the only goal worth pursuing in life – some or a lot of money is a good thing and I wouldn’t encourage anyone to stop accumulating more but we also need nurses and teachers who get paid virtually nothing, will never get rich and yet provide an essential service
Grant didn’t make that sale, he’s got more money than me, more visible success but there are fundamental laws of life and character and some appropriate degree of thrift (relative to your resources), isolation (in nature, meditation) and a mission greater than the mere pursuit of wealth are essential to true character. Grant also bashed Dale Carnegie and said how great L Ron Hubbard and his book Dianetics are…
Despite the odd annoyance I can see that overall the book does have real content and value. I am an accountant, not a salesman and so when I’m negotiating a lower legal bill, or higher salary I rarely hear the objection “I need to ask my wife” or “I’m not planning on making a sale today” however there was a lot that was still useful to me although most of that was around general confidence and being sold on your own message rather than any specific techniques. The book did make sales sound very interesting and if I worked in a traditional sales role I would be reading Grants material constantly.
I think the main takeaways are:
• Always be working on your pipeline, no use selling if you aren’t also building your pipeline or you will run out of customers
• Be confident in yourself, your product and your price – you can’t sell something you don’t believe in
• Buy your own product
• Develop the belief it is unethical for you to not sell your product – it is so important
• Don’t spend too much time off topic, with chit chat and building rapport
• Follow up after the sale, solve problems and upsell, sell more and get referrals
• Look like a professional
• Spend your time wisely, don’t waste our most precious resource, be the first one at the office
• Overcome call reluctance
• It if someone says that is too expensive, show them a more expensive offering, judge the reaction then consider moving to a less expensive option – the customer is probably saying that you product doesn’t solve my problem (enough) and in some cases a more expensive option can – do not get stuck negotiating prices
• Do not be the cheapest option and compete only on price – a cheaper option will come along and it will be a race to the bottom
• Develop lines for overcoming the most common objections to closing, practice these until they are second nature, make notes of any new objections you encounter and work on those for next time
• Do an analysis after every sale (or attempted sale)
• Keep customer data, children’s, names, birthdays, interests – never discard it, it can be used again
• Everyone is a potential customer, old school friends, even old school enemies
• Use social media to get out of obscurity and get people talking about you and your products