Powerful Sales Results. Every Lead. Every Time”
Do you remember that scene in “Jerry Maguire” when Renee Zellweger says to Tom Cruise … “You had me at hello”? The author of this book, Weldon Long, had me at his dedication page …
“This book is dedicated to the passionate and hard-working men and women who eat what they kill in the sales profession. You are the engines of commerce because nothing happens until something gets sold.”
Selling is hard work but, if you have the right mindset and you can consistently deploy your process (this book teaches you what those are and how to do it), you will consistently achieve your prosperity goals. Weldon makes it simple.
It starts with your prosperity mindset (the foundation of many of his books) which Weldon calls F.E.A.R. In this step, you will move from a whiner mentality (“Stinkin’ thinkin’ – Zig Ziglar) to that of a winner. Each of these steps is explained in detail in the book.
- Focus
- Emotional Commitment
- Action
- Responsibility
He points out that you can only control your process. The buyer alone controls the results. They will decide whether or not to buy. Your goal is to ensure that they make that decision (conclude the sale) in a timely manner regardless of the outcome. If your process has been performed correctly, more often than not, the results will be in your favor.
Weldon effectively shares a number of analogies to drive home his conviction that, if you consistently follow the same process each and every time, the outcome will be the same. If I drive home the same way every day, I will always arrive at the same destination … home. If your company manufactures the same product day in day out, using the same materials and plans, you will consistently produce the same product.
Selling is no different and, if you practice your process, it will become much like muscle memory. I like to call it reflex. Reflex is the difference between knowing what you should do vs. doing it automatically without even having to think about it. It’s how you put your pants on in the morning.
Your market is composed of three types of buyers … Value, Price, and those who will vacillate between the two based on internal and external factors. As salespeople, we want everyone to be a value buyer but, what if we could move a percentage of the other two to that category? Your market share just went up dramatically!
The Consistency Selling model, R.I.S.C. (all clearly explained in the book), is designed to walk your prospect down the sales hallway which takes them from the beginning of the sale to the end. This is your repeatable sales process.
This hallway, however, is loaded with hazards in the form of escape doors which represent the most common reasons given by a buyer to delay making a decision. Through consistency anchoring (questions leading to power questions), and public declarations of a preference for your offering (which will affect your prospect’s future actions), we seek to keep those doors shut.
- Relationship building
- Investigate the problems
- Sell your company and your solutions
- Conclude, not necessarily close, the sales call
What!? No close? I am constantly preaching that closing is highly overrated. I believe that the close is the natural culmination to any sale provided that the rest of the sales process has been completed correctly. It is what you do before and during the sale that will predict the outcome at the end. Weldon would seem to agree.
Throughout this process, you are minimizing the risk that is associated with your prospect making any purchase. This is particularly critical if you are dealing with higher ticket items or if your products or services are priced substantially more than those of your competitors.
Perceived risks are those factors that will delay a buying decision and potentially drive your prospective customer toward seeking other options. A risk-reversal guarantee will minimize this obstacle.
A signature story from a customer about how you stood behind your product is one other powerful way to minimize risk. An opportunity lies in every crisis and, when you have honored your guarantees, even to the point of issuing a full refund, there is a powerful story to be told!
Another critical factor is building trust. The keys to earning trust are character and competency and you have to demonstrate both. Just because you are a fine upstanding citizen, as my plumber, this does not mean that you will be cleaning my teeth.
I very much enjoyed reading this book. It is simple, straightforward, and every step is clearly, and completely defined. Weldon is an extremely powerful storyteller and he uses these skills to effectively demonstrate the common sense validity of his suggestions. Weldon has taken Sales 101 and made it a graduate course and I very much appreciate and respect that!
I could easily write a book about this book but, it would only be a poor knock-off of the real thing. You deserve the original script! This book is not yet available (publishes October 2, 2018) but, you can pre-order it on Amazon. Do it!
About the author – Weldon Long is a successful entrepreneur, sales expert and author of the NY Times Bestseller, The Power of Consistency – Prosperity Mindset Training for Sales and Business Professionals. He is one of the nation’s most powerful speakers and a driven motivator who teaches the Sales and Prosperity Mindset philosophies that catapulted him from desperation and poverty to a life of wealth and prosperity.
At the age of 39, Weldon was living in a homeless shelter after having served 13 years in prison. A 9th grade dropout and three-time convicted felon, he found himself broke and unable to find work.
After 6 months of knocking on many doors, he landed a sales position and quickly became one of the industry’s top sales leaders. In 2004, he opened his own company, and in 2009 that company was selected by Inc. magazine as one of the nation’s fastest-growing privately held companies.
Weldon currently lives in Colorado with his wife and their two children.
Craig M. Jamieson
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