No B.S. Book Series from Dan Kennedy

(no holds barred, kick butt, take no prisoners guides to business success)
Sales Success
Dan Kennedy



Sales Advice Not Swiped From Other Books!

This book is about getting rich by becoming far better at the selling process than your competitors. What it's NOT is the kind of warmed-over, cliché-ridden advice you find replicated in a jillion other books on selling. Dan Kennedy would never have it that way.

Chapter 2 (pdf)
Chapter 9 (pdf)
Table of Contents (pdf)

He's been called "The Professor of Harsh Reality" because he reaches salespeople in the tough world they occupy. He offers a set of no-BS strategies for overcoming obstacles to success, many of them self-imposed. Provocative, sarcastic and irreverent, the book reads like the seminars he conducts around the world-events that cause a stampede to the back of the hall for his materials after he finishes.

Learn:
• Dan's 13 eternal truths about selling
• The surprising reasons you should "position" instead of prospect for sales
• How to structure the sale in six simple steps
• And the secrets to becoming a true master at the art of persuasion.





Sample Chapter
chapter 2

Strategy 2
The Positive Power of Negative Preparation


I've been involved in what I've labeled "the success education business" since 1976. Since 1978, I've been an active member of the National Speakers Association-fraternizing and consulting with hundreds of people who earn their livings as professional lecturers and seminar leaders, including some whose names you know. During that time, I've spoken to nearly 6,000,000 people from the platform, maybe more, about success-oriented topics. I've delivered as many as 100 speaking presentations a year for major corporations and associations and at large public events; only in the past couple of years have I deliberately cut back that pace. I have frequently been mislabeled and misintroduced as a "motivational speaker" from the platform, in meetings, at cocktail parties. As a result, I've had more conversations than I care to count with my students, clients, customers, peers, and friends about "positive thinking." Through it all, I've come to the conclusion that at least 95% of the people who think they're positive thinkers actually have no idea what positive thinking is really all about. Too many people think it's some kind of mystical, magical shield from the real world. They believe that if they just think positive, bad things cannot happen to them. If something bad happens to somebody, they say: "See, you weren't thinking positively." But it just doesn't work that way. You can think positively until you are turning blue from the effort, but you'll still run into obstacles from time to time. People who believe that positive thinking is supposed to keep the bogeyman away eventually wind up frustrated, discouraged critics of positive thinking. Being a positive thinker does not mean that you should refuse to acknowledge the way things are. In fact, people succeed in business, sales, and marketing by dealing with "what is" not with "what ought to be." The true positive thinker acknowledges potential and existing negative circumstances and reactions, and engineers a plan to overcome them to achieve positive results. In selling or negotiating, I call this the positive power of negative preparation.

How General Patton Used the Positive Power of Negative Preparation

There's a great sequence in the movie Patton where General Patton is dozing the night before a battle. He has Field Marshal Rommel's book on tactics in his lap. The next day, Patton's troops drive Rommel's troops off the battlefield into retreat. As the gunfire and other noise ends, Patton is standing alone, leaning forward, stage whispering across the battlefield: "Rommel-I read your book."

Some people would say that acknowledging Rommel's expertise as a tactician and preparing to counter any possible successful moves was being negative. They're wrong. It was positively brilliant. In several of the most successful, profitable, complex negotiations I've been involved in-buying and selling businesses; assembling capital; developing relationships with celebrities, manufacturers, and producers in the TV infomercial business-I've prepared by anticipating and writing down every possible question, concern, and objection the other party could raise, and then formulating my responses in advance. I carefully analyzed every weakness in my position that might be attacked and thought of ways to respond effectively. I thought of every possible thing that could screw up the deal and then thought of some preventive measure to take in each case. I was thoroughly prepared, from a negative perspective. In 1999, I sold one of my companies-that entire process, from first approaching my chosen buyer to cashing the check, took only six days. In 2003, I sold another of my businesses, in less than 20 days. These are typically complex sales situations fraught with peril, from deal-killing lawyers to hidden agendas to misunderstandings, and on and on. The speed with which I completed these sales is testament in large part to careful negative preparation.

Who Else Uses the Positive Power of Negative Preparation?

I'm a bit of a sports freak, and as a speaker, I've had the terrific opportunity of spending time backstage in "the green room" with champion athletes like Troy Aikman, Joe Montana, George Foreman, Mary Lou Retton, and with top coaches including Lou Holtz, Jimmy Johnson, and the late Tom Landry. My friends in the world of sports have included Brendan Suhr, who has been an assistant head coach of three NBA teams; and Bill Foster, former head basketball coach at Northwestern University and one of the "winningest" coaches in college basketball. I have talked about this subject with all of them and found consensus. These champions have super-strength positive attitudes, but they also wisely use the positive power of negative preparation. Most successful coaches go into each game with more than one prepared game plan. They have a plan to follow if their team gets ahead early in the game. They have a different plan to follow if their team falls behind. They have alternate plans ready to use different combinations of players in case one key player is injured during the game. That's not negative thinking; that's the positive power of negative preparation at work. I've done a lot of work in planning, scripting, and implementing group sales presentations and training others to do the same. What I call "group presentation marketing" applies to everything from a Tupperware party to a seminar designed to sell $50,000.00 real estate partnerships. There are a lot of special techniques for this type of marketing, but one of the most important is the anticipation and removal of the reasons for refusal or procrastination on the audience's part. Sometimes this is done with subtlety, weaving the objections and responses into the presentation. Other times it's done quite openly. One very successful presentation I designed ended with the presenter listing on the flip-chart the four main reasons why people don't join-and then answering every one of them. But in every case, every possible problem was thought out in advance and countered somehow during the presentation. You also have to do this when you are selling in print. I am paid from a $15,000.00 to $70,000.00 plus royalties as a direct-response copywriter to write full-page newspaper and magazine ads, sales letters, infomercials, and other marketing documents. More than 85% of all clients who use me once do so repeatedly-in spite of my high fees. Why? One reason is my very thorough negative preparation. When I'm creating an advertisement, brochure, or direct-mail piece, I make a list of every reason I can think of why the reader would not respond to the offer. I use that list of "negatives" as a guide in writing the copy. And the other top direct-response copywriters I know, like my friend John Carlton, also carefully consider these potential obstacles to the sale when crafting a message. This approach produces some of the most powerful selling techniques in print in the world. If this strategy is important to us, the people behind the scenes who get paid as much to write one sales letter as many professionals earn in six months, then it is important to you, too!

Six Steps for Using the Positive Power of Negative Preparation

1. Forget preconceived labels of "positive" or "negative."
2. Make a list of every question, concern, or objection that the other person could possibly come up with.
3. Make a list of everything that could go wrong.
4. Develop positive responses to all the negatives you've thought of.
5. Have your information, ideas, and documentation well organized so you can lay your hands on the appropriate notes and materials at a moment's notice.
6. Take great confidence from your thorough preparation.






No BS Sales Success
Dan Kennedy

Contents
Foreword by Tom Hopkins, xii
Preface, xiv

PART 1
15 No B.S. Strategies for Exceptional Success
in Sales, Persuasion, and Negotiations

chapter 1
Strategy 1: Ignoring the Word "No" 3
Nos Turned Into Yeses, That's What Master Salespeople Do, 9

chapter 2
Strategy 2: The Positive Power of Negative Preparation 11
How General Patton Used the Positive Power of Negative Preparation, 12
Who Else Uses the Positive Power of Negative Preparation?, 14

chapter 3
Strategy 3: Use Listening to Influence People 17
What Are You Listening For?, 20
How to Read Anyone's Mind, 21

chapter 4
Strategy 4: Avoid Contamination 24
How to Cheat on Your Expense Account and Other "Lessons" from the Grizzled Old Pro, 26

chapter 5
Strategy 5: The Process of Personal Packaging 29
A Valuable Lesson from a Prejudiced Banker, 30
Penniless Immigrant Sells His Way to Wealth, 34

chapter 6
Strategy 6: Remembering Why You're There 36
Thinking It Over, 40

chapter 7
Strategy 7: Do Expectations Govern Results? 42

chapter 8
Strategy 8: Proof: The Most Important Tool for Exceptional Success in Selling 49
Proof through Testimonials, 50
How Dumb Salespeople Work Ten Times Harder than They Need to and Get One-Tenth the Results They Could Get, 53
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words, 54
Statistical Proof, 56
How Much Proof Is Enough? How Much Proof Is Too Much?, 57

chapter 9
Strategy 9: Fred Herman's K.I.S.S. Principle 63
You Can Get Rich Making the Complicated Simple, 65
Close the Doors on the Sales Prevention Department, 66

chapter 10
Strategy 10: Sell Money at a Discount 68
How to Put Money in Their Pockets and Then Set It on Fire, 71
Becoming an "Added Value" Sales Professional, 72
Creating Added Value from Thin Air, 74
Creating Added Value at Nominal Cost, 74

chapter 11
Strategy 11: Always Compare Apples to Oranges 77
Most of the Advice You Get About Dealing with Price Resistance Is Wrong, 78

chapter 12
Strategy 12: In Search of the Free Lunch 81
How to Close the Difficult Sale with a Very Desirable Premium, 83
How to Strengthen Customer Retention and Stimulate Referrals with Premiums, 84
Premiums and "Big Ticket Selling," 84
The Remarkable Strategy of "Gift-with-No-Purchase," 86

chapter 13
Strategy 13: The Magic of Mystique 89
Perception Is Reality: The "Story" Is the "Secret Ingredient," 90
Creating Your Own Mystique, 91
Anyone Can Create Personal Mystique, 92
Modern Technology Can Confer Mystique, 93
Nothing Beats a "Magical" Demonstration, 93
How to Unmask and Still Create Mystique, 94
Everything Old Is New Again-At Least It Better Be!, 95

chapter 14
Strategy 14: I'd Rather Be Dumb and Persistent than Smart and Impatient 97
How Being a Dumb Frog Got this Rookie a Veteran's Top Income-Fast, 98
Persistence-Not Stupidity, 99
Does Success-or Failure-Breed Success?, 100
Resiliency Is Better than Persistence, 101

chapter 15
Strategy 15: Long Distance Is Nowhere Near as Good as Being There 103

PART 2
How to Stop Prospecting
Once and For All

chapter 16
Positioning, Not Prospecting 109
Writing, 110
Public Speaking, 112
Publicity, 114
Are You Just Another Salesperson?, 115
The Final Component, 118
"Gee, This Sounds Like a Lot of Work," 119

chapter 17
How To Use "Lead Generation Advertising" to Attract Highly Qualified Prospects 120
Real Estate Agents, 120
Insurance, Financial Services, 121
Service Businesses, 121
Mortgage Brokers and Loan Officers, 122
Never the Pest, Always the Welcome Guest, 122
The "Welcome Guest Process" in Brief, 123
How a Lead Generation Ad Works Like a "Personals" Ad, 124
Where Do You Run Lead Generation Advertising?, 125
The Postcard Technique, 126
Lead Generation Online, 127
Headlines Are Important, 128
Who Uses Lead Generation Advertising?, 129
How to Use Lead Generation to Force Prospects to Give You Information and Grant You Control of the Sales Process, 132
The Last but First Thing You Need to Know About Lead Generation, 133

PART 3
A No B.S. Start-to-Finish Structure for the Sale
chapter 18
The Six Steps of the No B.S. Sales Process 137
Step One: Permission to Sell, 140
Step Two: The Offer, 143
Step Three: The Presentation, 144
Step Four: Emotional Logic, 146
Step Five: Closing the Sale, 148
Step Six: The Morning After, 150

PART 4
Dumb and Dumber: Things that Sabotage Sales Success

chapter 19
B.S. that Sales Managers Shovel onto Salespeople 153
How To Tell a Good Sales Manager from a Bad One, 155

chapter 20
The Six Dumbest Things Salespeople Do to Sabotage Themselves 156

PART 5
My Biggest Secret to Exceptional Results in Selling: Takeaway Selling

chapter 21
The Awesome Power of Takeaway Selling 163
Proving the Theory of Supply and Demand, 163
How a Starving Dog Trainer Rid Her Finances of Fleas, Once and for All, 166
A Real Estate Agent to Learn From, 167
The Power of Disqualification, 169
A Fundamental Choice, 173

PART 6
Sales Tools and Technology

chapter 22
The Brave New World of Tele-Selling 177
"Mr. Watson, Answer the Darned Phone!," 177
Let the Phone Do Sales Work for You, 180
Selling Via Conference Calls, 182
Dialing for Dollars, One on One, 183
Dialing for Dollars by Robot, 184
Just the Fax, Ma'am, 185
A Legal Notice, 187

chapter 23
The Brave New World of Techno-Selling 188
Caught Up In the Web, 189
How Smart Sales Professionals Use Web Sites, 189
The Trouble with Most Web Sites, 191
How Smart Sales Professionals Use E-Mail, 192
How Some Entrepreneurs Create Massive Online Salesforces, 194
Laptop Computer Selling, 194
Contact Management Tools, 196
Bonus Book: How To Read Anyone's Mind 199
Essential Reading, 227
Summary of Key Strategies, 228
Resource Directory, 230
Eternal Truths, 236
Preface to No B.S. Business Success, 239
Preface to No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, 246
Index, 249
Special Free Gift #1 from the Author, 261
Special Free Gift #2 from the Author, 262







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