The Accidental Salesperson: The Handbook for Selling Like a Professional in Everyday Life

By Allan Barmak

Almost every situation you face in life is a sales situation. You started at a young age when you tried to negotiate with your parents for a later bedtime, and you are still selling today, whether intentionally or by accident. Did you ever trade baseball cards when you were a kid? That's sales. Did you ever negotiate with your friends as to which clothes Barbie got to wear? That's sales.

The Accidental Salesperson not only teaches you how to identify sales interactions, but also walks you through the steps of the sales process to help you achieve success in the long run, regardless of whether you are an "accidental" or a professional salesperson.

Whether you are closing a million-dollar deal or just trying to get your kids to eat their vegetables, top sales rep Allan Barmak outlines a few key elements you need:

Identify your potential sales target Engage in dialogue to learn more about your prospect Negotiate Close the deal

By following these simple steps, you can find the inner salesperson you never knew existed and lift your career to the next level.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595895922

Allan Barmak

Allan Barmak has been a top sales rep for many different businesses, from international companies to local sales teams. He lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.

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Copyright © 2007 by Allan Barmak

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www.theaccidentalsalesperson.com

ISBN: 978-0-595-45277-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-69377-1 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-595-89592-2 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Understanding Your Sales Prospect

Preparation Leads to Sales Success

Initiating the Sales Process

Trackability and Accountability

During the Sale

The Heart of the Sales Interaction: The Presentation

The Salesperson’s Worst Fear: Objections

People Hate to Say No

Negotiation

After the No or After the Sale

Conclusion

Keep in Touch!

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank everyone who has helped me put this book together. Thank you to Mark Dewey who took a chance and gave a big-time sales job to a kid out of college. Thank you to Arden Colace for keeping me on the path of a sales career.

Thank you to my kids, for allowing me to practice my accidental sales techniques on them, whether they knew it or not. Finally, thank you to my wife Julie, for continuing to encourage me to stick with what I’m good at.

Introduction

What is a salesperson? Just the mention of the word evokes images of a guy with slicked-back hair in a cheap suit, with a sly grin, looking for his first chance to take your money. Salespeople are parodied, ignored, and are often looked down upon. But we are all salespeople, whether by design or by accident. Regardless of your place in the organizational chart of your business and regardless of your typical responsibilities around the office, or at home, or wherever you are, you’re a salesperson. You started at a young age when you tried to negotiate with your parents for a later bedtime, and you are still selling today. Did you ever trade baseball cards when you were a kid? That’s sales. Did you ever negotiate with your friends as to which clothes Barbie got to wear? That’s sales, and you’ve been a salesperson for a long time.

When a salesperson cold-calls your home or office, your first reaction is probably to hang up on him or her. I’m guilty of this too. When I get a call at home, I check the caller-ID. If the number comes up as unavailable, I usually think to myself, Ignore the phone, it’s probably just a salesperson.

I’ll admit that when I was in high school and in college, I didn’t aspire to be a Professional Salesperson. Nobody does. I think I wanted to be a lawyer because I liked to debate. Even during my senior year of college, I wanted to be a computer programmer, since those were the hot jobs at the time. It was because of this goal that I accidentally started my sales career. I had an internship that year and my boss knew someone who worked at America Online. I didn’t know much about the company, but I knew that it involved computers, so I thought that they might need computer programmers. I called my boss’ friend every week for five months, asking if a computer programming job had opened up.

Every week he said no, until one day he called me back. I’ll always remember what he told me:

I still don’t have any computer programming jobs for you, but you’re persistent and polite. Do you know what you’d be good at? Sales.

His division was just starting an inside sales team, and he thought I’d be a good fit. Once I decided to give it a try, I learned something about myself—I love being a Professional Salesperson. I love the fact that I have a job where my performance can be tangibly tracked. I love that I can give myself a pay raise just by selling something. I love the competition between me and my peers. I love getting out into the field and debating with people as to why my product or service is good for them. Let me rephrase that in business language—I like talking and negotiating with people.

How did I accomplish the successful sales pitch and get my first official sales job? The same way that every Accidental Salesperson can do it—through common sense. Everyone has the skills needed to succeed in sales, it’s just that we all need help learning how to identify a sales situation so we can apply those skills appropriately.

You’ve been a salesperson as a parent. You’ve been a salesperson as a student in school. You’ve been a salesperson as you tried to talk your way out of a traffic ticket. It may not say it on your business card, you may not even have a business card, but regardless, you are a salesperson.

Speaking of business cards, have you ever noticed that it is rare to find someone who carries a card that simply says salesperson? People are so embarrassed by the stigma of being called a salesperson that they will come up with any title to try to hide their true profession. I just took a look through the pile of business cards I have on my desk now, and here are some of the titles listed:

• Business Development Director

• Procurement Agent

• Vice-President of Business Development (I actually know three different VPs of Business Development within this particular company)

• Partnership Director

• Senior Account Executive

• Contracting Director

My personal favorite is the Contracting Director. What exactly does a Contracting Director do? I found out the detailed job description by talking to this person. As it turns out, he is in charge of bringing new contracts into the business. In other words, he’s responsible for letting people know about what his business can offer, and then getting them to sign a contract for those products or services. This is where the title of Contracting Director comes from. In the end, he’s responsible for closing contracts and thus, making sales. He’s a salesperson in every sense of the word.

Before you can truly benefit from learning the skills of the Professional Salesperson, you need to get over the negativity that’s often associated with that label. Don’t be ashamed of acting like a salesperson to someone. Even the Accidental Salesperson typically feels a little uncomfortable when he realizes he used something that may have been perceived as a sales trick to get something he wanted.

There are no tricks in successful sales interactions. A sale is the result of two parties reaching a mutually beneficial agreement. Even if you are a Managing Partner of a law firm, and you have ever told one person about what you do, you’re a salesperson. In that case, you may not have been recruiting potential clients at that exact moment, but I’m sure you put a spin on your job description which talked about the benefits of working with your firm. What about the doctor who is trying to convince his colleagues that a new surgical procedure could benefit a patient? He’ll need to give a pretty good sales pitch in order to get his point across. Maybe you are a Human Resources Manager, responsible for interviewing new hires. You’re still a salesperson. Part of your job is to get the applicant pool excited about the opportunity to work for your company.

Even if you’re a full-time homemaker, and you’ve ever been faced with the task of getting your kids to finish their dinner, you’ve been a salesperson. Think about it—in that basic interaction of getting your son or daughter to finish the food on his or her plate, you have gone through most of the stages of the sales process which I’ll talk about later in this book:

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Throughout this book, I will highlight the ways that the Professional Salesperson conducts his sales activities, and then I will interject examples of how everyone, as the Accidental Salesperson, can apply those tips and techniques in their daily lives. You will find that regardless of whether or not you are a Professional Salesperson or Accidental Salesperson, the fundamentals of sales interactions can be applied to any situation. Sales is a great job—the Professional Salesperson is part of a team responsible for bringing assets, in the form of revenue, intellectual talent, or other resources, into the business through sales, or by brokering win-win partnerships that can help the business. My hope is that you, as the Accidental Salesperson, will be able to learn from the experience of the Professional Salesperson.

The foundation of this book is that sales is a part of most everyday interactions. Think about what defines a salesperson, and think how it applies to the father of a household, for example. In this case, the business unit is the family. Let’s say that the father is looking to hire a painter to paint a room in his house. He will initiate contact with the painter, and he may also negotiate the price of the job. These are two sales activities that will result in the salesperson (the father) bringing an asset (a painter who can paint the house) into the business (the family unit). The result of this sales interaction is a win-win partnership—the painter will get paid for the job, and the business will get something that they wanted, a painted room.

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You can walk into any bookstore and find thousands of different books that offer advice as to how to sell regardless of what industry you work in, or whatever your business does on a daily basis. Each of these books is an educational tool, and like any kind of educational tool, each offers different bits of information, or tips and pointers that can help you achieve success. Personally, I like to read different sales books as often as possible. I usually find it helpful to have the goal of trying to get several pieces of information from each book and then adopting just a few of the things that I learned. It is next to impossible to implement all the information that is contained within any given book. The fact is that certain things work for certain people and different things work for other people. To that end, this book does not intend to be the definitive resource for all sales. I don’t claim to offer the magic key that will lead to unlimited success in the world of sales whether you are a Professional or Accidental Salesperson. This book should be used as a reference that you, the salesperson, regardless of your official title, can adapt to your specific sales interactions.

My goal is to offer a strong foundation that will help you achieve success in the long run. I have organized this book by highlighting the different aspects of a sales transaction from start to finish, including all things in between. Read through the whole book one time and then go back and pick out the chapters which are most relevant for you.

The Accidental Salesperson is most successful when he sells based on common sense, with a little help from