(Extracted from Double Your Profits: In Six Months Or Less by Bob Fifer)
… reflecting on my purchases (or non-purchases) from various providers of products and services. Why did I choose that real estate agent or architect? Why did I reject that other one even though he was obviously more qualified on paper? What about that store display or TV ad caused me to make that impulse purchase? What was it in the way the sales clerk acted that caused me to walk out of that store empty-handed even though I walked in intending to buy something? Every time I ask and answer one of these questions, I learn something about how to sell that I then apply to my own business.
A second way to learn selling is to study the masters: Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Clinton, and Margaret Thatcher; or Shaquille O’Neal, Greg Norman, Frank Sinatra, and Madonna. These are all people who have achieved a level of success and popularity far greater than other people who can think, play golf, or sing just as well. What is it they’re doing or saying that causes a significant chunk of the population to give them its money or votes? Every time I see them, I watch their facial expressions, their mannerisms, the things they say, the way they think, and adopt elements that I think would improve my style. (Well, maybe not Madonna’s.)
A key to maximizing sales is to see sales as an explicit, complicated process that offers infinite, never-ending opportunity for you to get even better. The role models are all around you: study them, learn, borrow and steal. Your next 20% increase in sales lies in how well you learn these lessons, not in accidents of fate or in more mundane things.
Every time I lose a sale, I force myself to think about why I really lost it. At what key moment did I offer or say the wrong thing? Then I resolve never to make that mistake again. Never make mistakes, and you’re not stretching yourself very far. Never make the same mistake twice, and you’re maximizing your own ability and your business’s success.