The Numero Uno Salesman: Your Guide to Becoming the Greatest Salesman in the World

By Karan Sondhi

'Packed with powerful examples and true incidents, this book will definitely become popular as an inspiring read for the aspiring salesmen in our country.'--Deepak Mehrotra, Director, Joy of Growing, Learning and Development Pvt. Ltd A successful salesman is alive to the needs of the customer, however difficult and demanding he may be. But do you know how to make him feel like a VIP from the moment he enters the showroom? How do you create in the customer the desire to purchase the product on sale? And how do you ensure repeat customers?The Numero Uno Salesman explains the principles of sales with the help of anecdotes from the field. If you are in sales, or if you want to be a salesman, this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper
• Release date: Mar 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9789352776665

Karan Sondhi

Author of motivational books, Karan Sondhi completed his schooling from The Lawrence School, Sanawar, and graduated from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. He has a postgraduate diploma in training and human resources from All India Management Association, New Delhi. He is a successful trainer of salesmen for the past fourteen years.

Book preview

Introduction

Dear Reader,

This book is for you. If you are in sales, this book is for you. If you want to raise your productivity, grow to your full potential and achieve the numbers you want, this book is for you.

I thank each and every one of you for reading my series of five motivational books which began with Believing Is Achieving and ended with Make Your Own Space. Motivation is a very powerful subject and I have tried through these five books to make you more confident and capable. The several emails you have sent in appreciation of these books are ample reward for my efforts towards giving you maximum value.

This book, The Numero Uno Salesman, is the result of fourteen years of being a sales and soft skills trainer. I have also been actively involved in sales when for three years I sold Twinings Tea in the corporate sector and pens for a friend who had his own brand of pens. I became a distributor for these two companies because I wanted to experience the feeling of having sold something and that feeling was truly great.

However, my Plan A has always been training, so after personally experiencing the joy of selling, I wanted to devote my life to training budding salesmen so as to make them successful in their career. To a great extent, I have achieved this mission, since for me my work is my mission and the driving force behind the success of great salesmen who are achieving their dreams.

My aim is to contribute the maximum towards the growth of sales, without which nothing would progress. The growth of a company depends on the quantity of its sales. Its balance sheet only looks good and profitability is ensured only due to great achievements in its sales figures.

Being a sales trainer for several leading companies over the last two decades has made me bow down to the magic and power that it wields. I have been a sales trainer for Ford India, Hyundai, Maruti, General Motors, Renault, Volkswagen, Tata Motors, Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M), Swaraj Mahindra tractors, Tata Tanishq, Tata Chemicals, National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Helios watches, American Embassy (for customer care), HDFC Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India, ICICI Prudential, Ayaya Global, Amity University, Ranbaxy, JVC India, NIIT (National Institute of Information Technology), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Reliance Infocomm, Frankfinn Institute of Air Hostess Training (where I was a personality development coach), Sapient Technologies, Mother Dairy, Karl Zeiss, etc.

Sales touch every human being in more ways than one. We are constantly selling our ideas both in our professional and personal lives in order to better our lot. To get a better job, we sell our experience. An insurance agent needs to sell policies in order to earn more. A good surgeon has to have a great success rate on the daily operations he performs; a shopkeeper is always trying to sell more products. Each sportsperson, each movie star, is selling his talents and being paid for it. Subconsciously, we are selling ideas each day of our lives because we all nurture dreams and goals that we want to fulfil.

Being a corporate sales trainer, I conduct need-based presentations daily for my clients, just like a good teacher sells his knowledge through the proficiency of his lectures, or a politician promotes himself through his speeches. Even a child sells a thought to his parents whenever he wants a special favour, like promising better school grades in return of the bike he wants. This clearly shows that in the competitive world that we live in, ‘selling concepts’ – or sales – is as much a part of our lives as we are of sales. Hence every individual, when he comes of age, is linked to sales more than he can ever fathom.

Here is an interesting and very inspiring story which a friend of mine mailed me:

Michael Jordan was born in 1963, in the slums of Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in a poor neighbourhood. Exposed to mindless violence and heavy discrimination in the slums, he saw for himself only a hopeless future.

His father saw in him a lost soul and decided to do something about it. He gave Michael, who was thirteen years old then, a piece of used clothing and asked, ‘What do you think the value of this outfit would be?’

Jordan replied, ‘One dollar, maybe.’

His father asked, ‘Can you sell it for two dollars? If you can do it, it would mean that you are a big help to your family.’

Jordan nodded his head. ‘I’ll try, but no guarantee that I’ll be successful.’ He carefully washed the cloth clean. Because they didn’t have an iron, to smoothen the cloth he levelled it with a clothes brush on a flat board and thereafter kept it in the sun to dry. The next day, he brought the cloth to a crowded underground station. After offering it for more than six hours, Jordan finally managed to sell it for $2. He took the two-dollar bill and ran home.

After that, every day he looked for used clothing, washed and ironed it, and sold it at the station. More than ten days later, his father again gave him a piece of clothing and asked, ‘Can you think of a way to sell this for twenty bucks?’

Shocked, Jordan asked, ‘How is it possible? This outfit can fetch two dollars at the most.’

His father replied, ‘Why don’t you give it a try first? You might find a way.’

After deliberating over it for a few hours, finally Jordan got an idea. He asked for his cousin’s help to paint a picture of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse on the fabric. Then he tried to sell it at the school where the children of the rich studied.

Soon, a housekeeper, who had come to pick up his master, bought that outfit for him. The master, a little boy aged ten years, loved it so much that he gave Jordan a five-dollar tip. Twenty-five dollars! It was a huge amount for Jordan, the equivalent of his father’s one-month salary.

When he got home, his father gave him yet another piece of used clothing. ‘Will you be able to sell it for $200?’ Jordan’s eyes lit up. This time, he accepted the cloth without the slightest doubt. A couple of months later, a very popular TV actress, Farah Fawcett, from the series Charlie’s Angels, came to New York for her movie promos. After the press conference, Jordan made his way through the security to reach Farah and requested for her autograph on that piece of clothing. When Farah saw this innocent-looking child asking for her autograph, she gladly agreed. A little later, Jordan was shouting excitedly, ‘This is a jersey signed by Miss Farah Fawcett … the selling price is $200!’

A businessman bought the jersey for $1,200.

Jordan’s father appreciated his son’s great sale and tearfully told him, ‘I am amazed that you really did it, my child! You are great!’

Later he asked Jordan, ‘Son, what have you learned from this great success?’ And Jordan replied, ‘That where there’s a will there’s a way.’

And the same Michael Jordan went on to become the greatest basketball champion in the world!

In sales too, if you have the will, you will find a way!

A sale takes place between two people for mutual benefit. The buyer benefits from using the product and the salesman benefits from the monetary value that he receives from the buyer.

Sales can also be concept sales, where an idea or a concept can be sold by one individual to another. A good example of this is Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, who has sold his idea of ‘Make in India’ not only to Indians but to the entire world, where he has most energetically and conclusively made trade pacts with several nations. Because of the way he has positioned this idea of India being a leading economy of the world, the rest of the world is looking at India in a more positive manner and is showing keen interest in entering into business deals with India. And this has kick-started with India and US signing various trade agreements, followed by Japan!

This powerful phenomenon of sales has led to the birth of this book, The Numero Uno Salesman. It encapsulates several of the best techniques of sales which I have captured in my more than twenty years as a sales trainer. The purpose of this book is to make all non-performing salesmen, experts in their respective fields. It is a must-have handbook which spells out very clearly what should be done and what should be avoided to become a truly successful salesman. This is my promise to everyone who reads this book that they will certainly become more confident and proficient in sales.

In my career, I have come across some highly successful salesmen while others couldn’t last for more than six months in the profession. Why does this happen? For any of the reasons given below:

Lack of Confidence: This happens mostly due to insufficient knowledge of the product and the inability of the salesman to convince the customer to purchase it. In sales there are primarily three things: the product, the salesman and the confidence that he has in the product. Hence, even if the product is good, if the salesman does not have confidence in it, he will never be able to execute the sale.

Greed and Anger: Sales is a profession of integrity. Greed kills integrity and replaces it with shame. A salesman once shamed cannot ever regain lost ground. Likewise, an angry salesman, who has no control over his temper, can never become a good salesman and achieve the desired numbers. Once the salesman vents his anger on the customer, the latter gets ready to bad-mouth him. And we all know the customer has the power to make or break a salesman’s career through just word of mouth.

Overcommitment: One of the greatest maladies in sales, overcommitment, always leads to a frustrated and disappointed customer, since he has been promised the product on a committed date which simply doesn’t happen. The salesman keeps promising tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes.

Improper Need Analysis: Unsuccessful salesmen often aren’t able to correctly understand the need of the customer and as a result sell her the wrong product, based on their own preference to sell a particular product since it is available, but certainly not what the customer wanted. This leads to a dissatisfied and unhappy customer, one who is most dangerous since she may bad-mouth the salesman.

Lack of Interest: When the involvement and interest in sales is missing at any point in a salesman’s career, he simply becomes a passenger and not a doer or an achiever. In such cases, sale simply doesn’t happen, leading to a demotivated, non-performing salesman.

Rolling Stones Gather No Moss: It is common knowledge that the deeper the roots, the sturdier the tree. Likewise, the salesman who stays put in one organization from beginning to the end is most likely to end his career as the vice-president, sales, in the same organization. Sadly, in the current scenario, a greater percentage of salesmen have loyalties only to the employer who would pay the maximum. But then, when they don’t perform and are dropped, it becomes a repetitive cycle and they don’t build a strong base for themselves.

Arrogance and Egoism: There is only one way to go for salesmen who are arrogant and have king-sized egos. Downwards! When arrogance steps in, learning and growth stops. Practising humility and modesty is a boon for a successful and truly grounded salesman.

Lack of Relationships: In my long career in sales, I have encountered many salesmen who are loners. They are happy simply keeping to themselves. They don’t socialize, can’t make friends easily and become very ineffective due to these traits. Sales is a profession for friendly, sociable and confident people