THE RULE OF BUSINESS

The rule of business The 80/20 Rule in Selling When I started selling, someone told me about the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. He said, “The top 20 percent of salespeople make 80 percent of the money, and the bottom 80 percent only make 20 percent of the money.” Wow! I was young, and this was a real eye-opener for me. I made a decision, right then, that I was going to be in the top 20 percent. Later I learned that this was one of the most momentous decisions and turning points of my life. Again, the top 20 percent of salespeople make 80 percent of the sales and 80 percent of the money. The bottom 80 percent of salespeople only make 20 percent. Your mission is to decide to join the top 20 percent, and then to learn how to get therethe top 20 percent of salespeople. It says that the top 20 percent of the top 20 percent, which equals the top 4 percent, earn 80 percent of the money in the top 20 percent of salespeople. Wow! In every large sales force, four or five people out of one hundred make as many sales and earn as much money as all the rest put together.

Top People Earn Vastly More The people in the top 20 percent, on average, earn sixteen times the average income of the people in the bottom 80 percent. Those in the top 4 percent earn on average sixteen times that of the folks in the bottom 20 percent. This is astonishing! A large American insurance company tested this 80/20 rule some years ago with their several thousand agents nationwide. They discovered that they had individual agents throughout the country who alone were selling and earning more thentwenty to thirty other full-time, trained, professional agents, even though they were all selling the same products to the same people, at the same prices out of the same offices, under the same competitive conditions. In the same year, I addressed two elite groups in two different industries. The people in these industries had all started off on the street, dialing for dollars out of the newspaper or the Yellow Pages. They all worked on straight commission, one sale at a time. But the average yearly income of the salespeople in these elite groups was $833,000 and $850,000. Some of the top people in these groups earned several million dollars a year on straight commission! Your goal must therefore be to get into the top 20 percent, and then the top 10 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 4 percent, and so on. The pur

wherever you want to go in the future. It is to make you one of the highest-paid people in your industry

Your Self-Concept in Selling For example, in selling you have a self-concept with regard to yourself and prospecting. If you have a high, positive self-concept, then prospecting is no problem for you. You get up in the morning eager to call on new people. You are competent and confident in the area of prospecting, so your sales pipeline is always full. If you have a poor self-concept with regard to prospecting, you will approach prospecting with fear and anxiety. You will avoid it wherever possible. The very idea of prospecting will make you tense and uneasy. You will do as little of it as possible and continually look for ways to avoid the activity. This is true in every other area of selling as well.

You can never earn more on the outside than you can on the inside. It is almost as if you have an “income thermostat” that determines your financial temperature.

Change Your Mind To increase your income, you must achieve your financial goals in your mind before you can ever achieve them in your reality. Your aim should be to increase your self-concept level of income bit by bit until you think, see, and feel yourself as a higher-income earner. Imagine yourself as if you were already the kind of person you want to be, earning the kind of money you want to earn. Look at other people who are earning more money than you and imagine that you are exactly like them. Suppose that you are already financially independent. Picture yourself having all the money you will ever need and only making.

sales calls because you enjoy meeting new people. This calm, confident, relaxed attitude, as if you were already a wealthy person, will help you perform at your very best, with much less tension.

The Key Result Areas of Selling In selling, there are seven key result areas , or KRAs. These KRAs are like the digits in a telephone number. You must dial each of them in sequence if you want to get through and make a sale. Your performance and effectiveness in each of these key result areas determine your overall success and the height of your income. These seven key result areas are prospecting, building rapport , identifying needs , presenting , answering objections , closing the sale , and getting resales and referrals. Your self-concept in each of these seven areas determines your performance in these areas, as well as your overall income level. Fortunately, everyone who is good in any one of these areas was once poor at it. Every professional in the top 10 percent started in the bottom 10 percent. The good news is that, if you can drive a car or operate a cell phone, you can become excellent in each of these seven critical skills. It is simply a matter of learning and practice. If you have a poor self-concept with regard to any particular sales activity, you will avoid that activity whenever possible. But the only reason that youfear taking action in a particular skill area is because you are not good at it— yet . You have not yet mastered the skill. If you are not good at something, you will make mistakes. You will feel awkward, angry and frustrated. It would be normal and natural for you to avoid that activity. 

Master the Skill The solution for your fears or reluctance in any key skill area in selling is for you to master that skill. Fortunately, there are more books, audiotapes, courses, and bits of advice available to you now to help you master each skill than you could consume in a lifetime. There is absolutely no reason for you to be held back from joining the top 10 percent simply because you are weak in a particular skill area. You can learn how to prospect effectively. You can be taught how to build high levels of rapport and trust

with prospects. You can become skilled at how to ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. You can develop calmness and confidence in your interactions with others. You can learn anything you need to learn through practice and repetition. It is the same with each skill area. You can become an expert at accurately identifying the needs of the person you are talking to, and qualifying the prospect, by asking more and better questions. You can become excellent in your sales presentation, growing so effective that people are tearing the product out of your hands even before you finish talking. You can learn how to answer the prospect’s objections and concerns, responding so satisfactorily that the objections disappear and never come up again. You can learn the various methods included in this book for asking for the order and closing th sale at the appropriate time. Finally, you can learn how to create a “golden chain” of referrals from prospects and customers and how to sell more and more to people who have bought from you already. These are all learnable skills.