21 Secrets of Million-Dollar Sellers: America's Top Earners Reveal the Keys to Sales Success

by Stephen Harvill

In this sharp, invigorating read, Fortune 50 consultant Stephen Harvill discovers twenty-one common behaviors of top earners across seven major industries that set them apart. These are the secrets of the world’s best salespeople who rake in at least one million dollars a year.

For over thirty years, Steve Harvill has helped successful sales teams do what they do better, smarter, more elegantly, and more imaginatively. As a consultant for some of the top companies in the world, including Apple, Pepsi, Samsung, and Wells Fargo, he aids in simplifying processes that have become unwieldy and making teams more effective.

His work inspired him to ask the What exactly sets the top producers apart from their peers? After spending a year interviewing 175 sales superstars from seven different industries, he found twenty-one distinct behaviors of successful salespeople. Organized by these best practices and filled with hundreds more tips, stories, and takeaways, 21 Secrets of Million-Dollar Sellers reveals how you can improve in every aspect of your job and rise to become one of the best.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Communication

272 pages, Hardcover

Published September 19, 2017

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

// Quotes

Differentiate themselves from the competition by harnessing the power of story and by thinking creatively
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nature isn’t everything. What these top earners all have in common is what they do to be successful. Consistent, steady action is the universal trait.
The underlying theme to every one of the 21 Secrets is discipline, persistence and dedication
tremendous focus and self-control
majority of the salespeople in the million-dollar club deal in products or services that are of high value, cost a lot, and are often B2B
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there were four specific, very special behaviors that were mentioned by both groups—the salespeople and their customers. I call these the Four Essential Secrets
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Essential Secret #1: SIMPLE
“I make things simple.”
dedicated commitment to making things SIMPLE for their clients
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getting rid of any obstacles
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making every interaction with you a breeze for your clients
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keep them from getting overwhelmed by too much information.”
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shield between the client and this avalanche of information.
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sends each client only what he or she needs or wants to see.
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when you help a client truly understand your product or service and what makes it different, special, and better, the client starts to trust you. The client engages. The client sees benefits. Most important, the client buys.
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posts a ninety-second video on its website for many of its timepieces alongside the more standard list of features. The video quickly summarizes the watch’s bells and whistles, demonstrates how it looks and fits on a wrist, and even suggests whether the watch is a good value for its price
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I simplified everything
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The more I can simplify the language and make it more concrete to them and their personal commitment
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SIMPLE starts with writing down every element of your sales process, with the eventual goal of making the whole process less complicated for your customers.
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list everything they were currently doing
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Which of these steps might my customers view as an obstacle to doing business with me?
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considered how to streamline some steps to create value for your client
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Essential Secret #2: The Jordan Formula
Antonio spends almost as much time studying investments as he does selling them
Extraordinary performance is all about putting in effort and energy behind the scenes and on game day

Essential Secret #3: Tell a Good Tale
Begin your story dramatically. Support your idea in the middle. End with a bang
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product knowledge, great teams to support their sales efforts, emotional connections, relationship development, and so on
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perhaps the most creative tool these hotshots possessed, and everyone had it, was the ability to tell a compelling story.
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what makes our clients tick, what’s important to them
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their vision, their values, how their clients help shape their goals
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Stories help us connect emotionally to ideas. In sales, a story magnifies an idea’s impact. It can help a buyer connect to the outcome of his or her purchase. A story can present a solution and cement a relationship
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the most successful sales professionals constantly use story as a tool
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story has a biological effect on humans, triggering the release of oxytocin, a hormone associated with trust
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SIX-WORD CHALLENGE
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Essential Secret #4: Make Friends First

Aristotle pondered the great questions of his day and used a process that was wonderfully SIMPLE (see Essential Secret #1) to gain the intellectual advantage and bring his students around to his way of thinking.
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focus on what your client’s problems are
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Tell me how your problem is impacting your business
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Tell me about your market
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Secret #5: One Level Above
by exceeding their expectations a little bit more every year
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the thing that sets him apart is the way he treats his clients
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Take one part of the client experience one level above where it is now
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focus on a single critical action that can make a substantive difference in your clients’ experience
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Secret #6: Build Your “Like” Platform
people like to do business with people they like
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Secret #7: They’ll Know It When They See It
visuals work
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Secret #8: W.A.I.T.
listening pays off in loyal clients and big numbers
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Secret #9: Sell Smart
keep learning skills you can use to stay educated and competitive and move up the career ladder
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Secret #10: Get Out of the Office
Understanding the importance of personal contact and using it in the sales process is one of the great differentiators between the average salesperson and the extraordinary salesperson
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Secret #11: Charm the Gatekeepers
construct relationships that go beyond just the decision maker.
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Secret #12: Save the Whales
If 20 percent of your clients are responsible for 80 percent of the dollars in your pocket, then they also should get 80 percent of your resources and attention.
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They had intimate knowledge of their whales, gleaned from a strong and profitable relationship
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One reason my interviewees have time to lavish attention on their whales is that the very state of having a few gazillion-dollar accounts means you don’t need as many accounts overall
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The “Support Suite.” M.J. has assembled an all-star roster of business connections, advisors, and top-drawer service people she’s always happy to put her clients in touch with. These include CPAs, estate planners, attorneys—even college admissions experts
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Each year they invite a handful of whales to a different sports event
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The Gathering is one of M.J.’s most successful ideas and a critical whale-saving strategy
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M.J. gets involved in her elite clients’ favorite charities
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enrolling these important clients in a monthly gift delivery service
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It doesn’t really matter what the gift is; what matters is that it suits the individual client’s taste and provides a monthly reminder
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Secret #13: Not So Fast
nothing can screw up those relationships like letting speed outweigh thought
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Great producers are great at recovery, but they are even better at stopping those mistakes from happening in the first place.
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discipline and the methods to slow down, think, and create the absolute best outcome for every client
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Secret #16: Master the Day
Identifying, harnessing, and valuing your energy will help you get to your goal faster and more efficiently
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Secret #17: Make Your Own Metrics
First, define your objectives.
Next, focus on the actions that will cause the effect you’re looking for
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the best way to achieve a result is to know what causes it and do more of that
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Finally, validate the results. After each sale, Fitz reviews the process from start to finish.
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Secret #19: Bang Your Drum
How do you get to be known as an expert? Through strategic exposure. Volunteer to teach and speak at industry events
Write for trade publications. Post your industry-related thoughts on your blog. Take classes that add professional designations
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Your clients already know you understand whatever it is you sell
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Secret #21: Become Your Product
Developing this link between yourself and what you sell is crucial to career success
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when sales is involved from the get-go, they can advise marketing, bringing insights from their experience with clients. When this happens, the salesperson starts to connect to the product
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The next step to Become Your Productor service is insatiable curiosity
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spend time with the engineers and doctors who designed the machines
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Conclusion
These 21 Secrets are the very core behaviors of the men and women at the top of their profession
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guaranteed to build your skills and improve your performance
to get to where you want to be, start by assessing where you are now

[Rosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

What exactly sets the top salespeople apart from their peers?

According to Stephen Harvill, a consultant for some of the top companies in the world such as Apple and Samsung, and author of 21 Secrets of Million-Dollar Sellers, the best performing salespeople have certain characteristics that set them apart:

1.- “These rock stars don’t mess around, they don’t procrastinate, and they don’t make excuses. They attend to their careers with purpose.”

2.- “The vast majority of the salespeople in the million-dollar club deal in products or services that are high value, cost a pretty penny, and are often business-to-business (not business-to-consumer) transactions.”

However, Harvill conveys “this doesn’t mean that if you are new to the sales game, or if you deal in less expensive or lower-volume goods or services, you can’t benefit and learn from the secrets in this book.”

Let’s dive in:
TIP #1 SIMPLE

One way top sales professionals add value to their clients is making things simple even if the process complicates theirs, “In sales, your goal is to make everything SIMPLE for your customers. Doing that may or may not be easy for you.”

Effective salespeople anticipate and handle anything to avoid their clients getting overwhelmed by too much information, and saving their customers time and energy.

Here’s the point:

Top sellers “view SIMPLE as a sales strategy and actively look for ways to simplify.”


TIP #2 MISTAKES WERE MADE

Even the best of the best salespeople make mistakes. When Harvill’s interviewees discover an error, “They slow down long enough to answer two key questions:

1. What caused the error?

2. How do we correct it so that the client’s needs are met?”

Here’s how it goes:

If the issue is simple to solve, the top sellers communicate their clients “They’ve made a mistake and explain how they’re going to rectify it.”

If the problem is more complicated, “They take time to decide on the best way forward”, meanwhile, “They make the client aware of the mistake the moment it happens and say, ‘We’ll be back in touch shortly with a solution.’”


TIP #3 FOCUS MANAGEMENT-TIME BLOCKING

Time blocking is a disciplined approach to productivity that divides the workday by activities, and take advantage of your energetic times. This method requires discipline but it pays off for Harvill’s top seller interviewee Trudy.

Let’s see Trudy’s method to apply the time-blocking productivity technique:

Consider every event in your day, for example: Time alloted to reading and answering e-mails in an event, making and returning phone calls is another event.Time allotted to budgeting is yet another event. Even a workout is an event.

Divide every workday into hour-long pieces and the allocates one of these pieces (or half of a piece, or two or three pieces) of her workday to each event.

Trudy uses a paper calendar and, colored squares to represent the pieces/events of the workday. You can use an app to do the same, it’s up to you.

Fill in the squares with whatever assignment you have given yourself.

During each allocated block of time, you do what you have planned and nothing else. Also, consider if you’re not to be disturbed, unless it’s an emergency.

Each evening before you call it quits for the day, rearrange the blocks for the next day.

It’s important to know when you feel more and less energetic, use this information to arrange high-energy and low-energy tasks through your day.


TIP #4 MAY I HELP YOU?

One that took me by surprise! I thought it was a good sale practice to ask “May I help you? After reading 21 Secrets of Million-Dollar Sellers, I had to change my mind.

“Banning “May I help you?” from your greeting is a good idea in pretty much any sales situation. When you ask someone if she needs help, that’s a closed-ended question that can be answered with a yes or a no. If the potential buyer says no, you’re already starting at a disadvantage.”

So what can you do about it?

Instead use, for example: “Welcome to our dealership,” and avoid one of the pushy salespeople behaviors.

ARC by Edelweiss

The post 4 Powerful Habits of the World’s Best Salespeople appeared first on rosaelenad.com

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book I had low hopes for, since there are no shortage of books offering secret guides to this and that, accompanied by a mass of hyperbole. This one was different, boy was it different! It is a research-backed, deep dive into how some of the top sales talent in the United States work, distilled into 21 key take-away points or messages.

The author unashamedly says that they are not secrets per se, but it drew you in! What they are, however, can be ‘common’ key factors that are especially beneficial to these high-roller sales leviathans. For over three decades the author has been working with sales talent to help motivate, shape, coach and boost their performance, and this book could be viewed as a rational distillation of what he has seen work. Maybe some of the points came as a surprise at the same time when the analysis was latterly conducted!

The approach of conducting the research was particularly interesting and appropriate, allowing the talent to direct their own testimony and speak freely. The result is their considered view of what works and why, rather than a pre-formulated closed series of questions that may be revealing on one hand, but limiting on another! There is a lot more than 21 data-points or ‘best practices’, however, to accompany it – one of the side-benefits or side-effects of interviewing 175 top-performers from seven different industries.

It is a highly enjoyable, engaging and giving book. The more you consult it and consider it the more you potentially stand to get from it. Of course, then the hard work still falls onto your shoulders, but you may be able to attack the task with the power of a superstar effectively by your side. Don’t just skim the key findings and assume you can implement them: such as the advice to keep things simple. The advice is a lot deeper and more comprehensive than you may imagine, but the power can be very, very strong. Read carefully, several times even. Even then after that, maybe read it again and then consider your own company and how you could amend each finding to your operations. The effort could easily pay for itself!

You don’t even have to be involved in sales to get something out of this book. Elements can work in other business areas and, of course, your private life. A powerful all-rounder!

[Chorlan Poniente · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each secrets were miraculously unequivocal.
Most of the laid down ideas are already familiar to me, yet the tone Harvill employed here sounds apparently fresh as a fruit, and is engaging.
Of all sales book I've read, this book of Harvill presents the most comprehensive explanation about rhetoric, the art of persuasion, argument.
Even though various chapters (or Secrets) do not apply in my business situation, which is selling over the phone, I obstinately read passages which surprisingly hinted involuntary ideas I can associate in my selling practice.
I've now arrived at the climax of the book, and let me quote on page 235 (Touchstone Edition): "If you know that it's not just your product or service that's important to your client, but that you yourself play a major role in the relationship - if you want to make a difference and are hungry for genuineness in your professional and personal life - then you are already have much in common with million-dollar producers."

[Sue-Lynn Voigt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone in Business should read this book. He may not have reinvented the wheel, but he gives you a crash course in getting your wheel on your buggy, your buggy our of the ditch and on the road to town. Whether you implement these "secrets" will be a direct correlation to your success. I have also had the pleasure of being at one of the Author's events. He is extremely entertaining, while getting the message across.

[Parthiban Vijayaraghavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely wonderful book, Stephen Harvill has great writing skill, the book is so simple and practical to use. Wonderful Examples and many stories to illustrate the key points. The book is divided into three parts starting with fundamentals: Universal behavior of million dollar salesperson. Part 2: Treat your customers' the way million dollar producers treat theirs. Part 3: Harness your energy, get organized, and manage your schedule like a sales superstar.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not life changing but some good nuggets in the Book. Well organized and full of anecdotes.

[Fiona Forthe · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some good tidbits about developing relationships in here, because that's the key message: successful salespeople have long-term relationships with their clients. Now you know the secret!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful, looking forward to applying the tactics in my own online sales career.

[Michael B · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good outline yet short on substance.

[HASE Trek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read and he incorporates useful ways to increase sales

[Carsten Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting overview of which approaches works for some of the most consistent top-performers in sales, selling very different products and different types of clients, showing that while some truths are universal for top performers, other approaches are individual.
As a sales manager myself, I picked up several ideas and concepts that can be implemented immediately and others that with some tweaking can be applied as well.
A worthwhile book.

[Margot Note]

"Essential Secret #1 is about getting rid of any obstacles that might keep customers from doing business with you. It's about making every interaction with you a breeze for your clients, even if doing so complicates things for you" (24).

"Make your client a friend before you can make him or her a customer. Forming a relationship with a client is more important than making a sale--at least in the beginning" (57).

"Take one part of the client experience one level above where it is now" (72).

"Provide people with opportunities for self-improvement and you'll become indispensable to them" (114).

"Getting out of the office should be part of every sales pro's day" (122).

"Embracing the dark side means accepting that No will happen far more often than Yes will, and figuring out how to use that inevitable rejection to your best advantage" (162).