No lie-- truth is the ultimate sales tool

193 Pages·2004·1.477 MB·English

by  Maher, Barry

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No Lie—Truth Is the
Ultimate Sales Tool
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Other books by Barry Maher include:
Filling the Glass: The Skeptic’s Guide to Positive Thinking
in Business
The Marketing Yearbook
Legend
Getting the Most from Your Yellow Pages Advertising
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No Lie—Truth Is the
Ultimate Sales Tool
Barry Maher
McGraw-Hill
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DOI: 10.1036/0071435956
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For more information about this title, click here.
Contents
Preface Turning Negatives into Selling Points vii
Chapter 1 Making the Skeleton Dance 1
Chapter 2 YouAre Your Most Important Customer 23
Chapter 3 Skeleton Protocol Step 1: Becoming Your Most
Difficult Prospect 33
Chapter 4 Skeleton Protocol Step 2: Finding the Positives
in Every Negative 37
Chapter 5 Skeleton Protocol Step 3: There’s a Reason for
the Negative 47
Chapter 6 Skeleton Protocol Step 4: The Negative’s
Other Edge 51
Chapter 7 Skeleton Protocol Step 5: More Expensive,
Less Reliable, and Proud of It 57
Chapter 8 Skeleton Protocol Step 6: Balancing Act 63
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vi Contents
Chapter 9 Skeleton Protocol Step 7: Becoming the
Ultimate Benefit 71
Chapter 10 When the Truth Kills the Sale 85
Chapter 11 Tell, Sell,the Whole Story, Phinneas 97
Chapter 12 Become an Expert Witness 117
Chapter 13 Putting Those Negatives in Perspective 129
Chapter 14 Sex, Rejection, and Several Assorted Butts 139
Chapter 15 Give It a Shot: Closing Made Simple 155
Index 175
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Preface
Turning Negatives into
Selling Points
No Lie—Truth Is the Ultimate Sales Tool.You might think this is
a book about ethics.
It’s not.
I’m a big fan of ethics. When I sell, I sell according to my
ethical standards. When you sell, I assume you sell according
to your ethical standards. I’m happy for both of us. But that
has nothing to do with this book. This is a book about sales
techniques that work. It’s about simple, easy-to-use techniques
that build instant trust and credibility and can help you sell
more whether you’re a highly experienced sales professional, a
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viii Preface
novice sales rep, or a complete nonsales type who needs help
selling your products and services or even yourself, your vision,
and your ideas.
The key word here is instant, as in instant trust, because
these techniques will help you sell more, right now, today. If
they didn’t, no one would use them. It’s all well and good to talk
about honesty and ethics in selling and about selling with full
disclosure and building long-term trust and credibility to gen-
erate more sales down the road. But no sales manager wants to
hear, “I didn’t make my numbers, but I’m building valuable rela-
tionships.” Salespeople need more sales now. They need to make
a paycheck and feed their families.
Do salespeople care about honesty and ethics? Of course they
do. Like almost everyone else on the planet, they want to feel
good about what they’re doing in their careers and their lives.
They want to be honest with their customers; they want to be
honest with themselves. They want to be able to sell with full
disclosure. But they need to be able to sell—and sell today, not
just sometime in the vague future. They need to be able to gen-
erate instant trust and credibility. They need to be able to tell—
and sell—the truth the first time they ever call on a customer.
That’s what this book is all about.
The anecdotes, examples, stories, case studies, parables, and
pontifications packed into these pages represent most of what I’ve
learned in a lifetime of selling and working with salespeople.
Remember that ifsometime down the road I try to sell you a sequel.
Dancing Skeletons
N0 Lie—Truth Is the Ultimate Sales Toolis based on one extraordi-
narily simple premise: Every product, every service has its potential
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Preface ix
negatives. Great salespeople aren’t afraid of those negatives. They
don’t stumble over them, and they certainly don’t try to hide them.
Great salespeople use potential negatives as selling points; they even
brag about them.
As George Bernard Shaw said, “If you cannot get rid of the
family skeleton, you might as well make it dance.”
Truth is the ultimate sales tool.
Acknowledgments
More people have helped create this book than I can possibly
thank. But let me begin with those who have shared their expe-
riences and their truths with me over the years, sometimes even
at risk to their careers. Still, if you think you recognize someone
in these pages in a situation that may put his or her career at risk,
you’re mistaken. Whenever necessary, names have been changed
and situations have been disguised.
I’d also like to thank Barry Neville, editor extraordinaire, and
all the people at McGraw-Hill. Barry was the prime mover behind
No Lie—Truth Is the Ultimate Sales Tool. Without his insight,
encouragement, and sense of humor, this would be a far differ-
ent book. And without the generosity of my agent, Andrew Stu-
art of the Stuart Agency, it probably wouldn’t be a book at all.
Barry Maher
Las Vegas, NV/Helendale, CA
www.barrymaher.com