Sales Success Secrets from Sales Guru Brian Tracy

By: Brian Tracy and Michael Tracy, authors of Unlimited Sales Success: 12 Simple Steps for Selling More Than You Ever Thought Possible (Amacom, 2013)

You have the ability, right now, to earn two and three times as much as you are earning today. Everyone who is ahead of you in the game of life was once behind you, sometimes far behind you. And what they have done to move ahead, you can do as well.

Here are seven ideas for you to use every day to dramatically increase your sales results.

1. Get serious about your work. Make a decision to go all the way to the top, to join the top 10 percent in your field. Anything less than a commitment to excellence is an unconscious acceptance of mediocrity, of average or below-average performance. When you get serious about selling and make a decision to be the best at what you do, your life begins to change and you are on your way to becoming one of the top people in your profession.

2. Identify your limiting skill to sales success. What one skill, if you developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would help you to double your sales and double your income?

Whatever your answer, write it down, make a list of all the things that you can do to learn that skill, and begin today, one step at a time, to master that skill. You could be only one skill away from doubling your income. And when you have mastered this one skill (which you certainly will if you persist), you must then ask the question again: “Now, what one skill would help me the most to increase my income?” You then set that new skill as a goal, make a plan to learn that skill (including reading, listening, and practicing in this area), and then get busy.

For the rest of your career, become a do-it-to-yourself project, always working to develop the skill that can help you the most at that time.

3. Choose your friends carefully. Get around the right people. Charlie Jones used to say that “you will be in five years the same person you are today, except for the books you read and the people you meet.”

Positive people associate with other positive people. Winners associate with winners. When you change your thinking and become a total optimist about yourself and your potential, you will begin attracting into your life other people who think and feel the same way.

Simultaneously, negative and unhelpful people will drift away from you, finding you to no longer be of interest to them.

Top salespeople are “loners.” I don’t mean that they are “a-loners,” antisocial people who have no friends or associates. This just means that top people are selective about the people they associate with. They do not allow themselves to spend time around negative people who can drag them down with their complaining and their pessimism.

4. Decide to live forever. Take excellent care of your physical health. Make a decision today that you are going to live to age 90 or more. Then examine your current health habits and ask yourself, “What one health habit, if I were to develop it, would most help me to improve my levels of fitness and energy today?”

Determine your ideal weight and then make a plan to achieve that weight, and keep it for the rest of your life. Determine the level of physical fitness and energy you would like to enjoy, and then begin exercising on a regular basis so that you feel terrific about yourself.

Remember the 100-year-old man who was interviewed by the newspaper and asked how he felt upon reaching 100 years of age? He said, “If I had known that I was going to live this long, I would have taken much better care of myself.”

Your job is to take excellent care of yourself today so that you do live that long, and you feel great about yourself the whole way.

5. Practice creative visualization. Visualize yourself continually as the very best in your field. Remember, the person you “see” is the person that you will “be.” All improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental picture of yourself. When you visualize and see yourself as calm, confident, positive, and successful, your subconscious mind accepts that picture as a command and organizes your external behavior so that it is consistent with your inner picture.

You change your outside life from the inside, by creating exciting mental pictures of the person you would like to be and the life you would like to live.

6. Practice positive self-talk. Talk to yourself positively. Control your inner dialogue. Your emotions are largely determined by the way you talk to yourself throughout the day. Psychologists call it your “explanatory style.”

The challenge is that if you do not deliberately talk to yourself in a positive way, you will automatically slip into thinking about things that make you mad or sad. Instead of letting this happen, say positive things to yourself, such as:

1. “I like myself!”
2. “I’m the best!”
3. “I love my work!”
4. “I can do it!”
5. “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

The most powerful words in the world are the words that you say to yourself and believe. When you repeat these positive messages, over and over, you program them deeper and deeper into your subconscious mind until you walk, talk, think, and feel consistent with these words and thoughts.

7. Get going and keep going. Always take positive action: Get going, get busy, get moving, and develop a “sense of urgency.”

The common characteristic of all successful people in all fields is that they are intensely action-oriented. They are in constant motion. They believe in “doing it, fixing it, trying it!”

The good news is that, the faster you move, the more ground you cover. The faster you move, the more people you see. The more people you see, the more sales you make. The more sales you make, the more money you earn. The more money you earn, the more positive and motivated you are to see even more people, to make even more sales, and to make even more money.

Keep repeating to yourself the magic words, “Do it now! Do it now! Do it now!” until these words become programmed into your thoughts and feelings. As Albert Einstein said, “Nothing happens until something moves.” Your job is to move. Be sure that you are the fastest-moving person in your sales team — the one who is in continuous action.

This is a wonderful time to be alive for excellent salespeople. When you become excellent at what you do, you will always be able to control your present and your future. You will always be able to earn an excellent living for yourself and your family. You will always be able to keep control of your own life and your own destiny.

Go for it!

Unlimited Sales Success: 12 Simple Steps for Selling More Than You Ever Thought Possible by Brian Tracy and Michael Tracy
^© 2014 Brian Tracy and Michael Tracy
All rights reserved.
Published by AMACOM Books
www.amacombooks.org
Division of American Management Association
1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

Author Bios:
Brian Tracy is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations. The world’s leading sales trainer, Brian has trained more people in more industries and more countries than any other sales trainer alive.

Michael Tracy is the Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Analog Analytics, a software-as-a-service company that was acquired by Barclays Plc in May 2012. Michael’s experience also includes founding an online performance marketing company and managing door-to-door sales teams for AT&T and Verizon.