The Secret of Selling Anything

Harry Browne

If you`ve read other selling books, you`re probably tired of the false promises that never quite work out. You`re probably tired of being told "you can do it if you just believe you can."

You`re probably tired of reading about tricks that made a particular sale ~ tricks that may have been appropriate to a particular situation, but not yours ~ and even if they were appropriate, how would you have thought of them at the right time?

If you`ve read books on selling before or listened to "sales experts," you`re probably tired of being pumped with hot air ~ told how you must "come alive," be full of enthusiasm, dominate the world around ~ all the things that don`t happen to be a part of your basic nature.

Well, this book isn`t anything like that. In fact, this book was written to refute many cliches of selling that have been accepted without question for years.

This book will prove to you, I hope, that the stereotyped image of the "born salesman" is a mistake. You don`t have to remake your personality and become super-enthusiastic, super-aggressive, domineering. Not only are those traits not necessary, they are actually a hindrance to making sales.

And you won`t have to develop that uncanny ability to come up with the right answer at the right time ~ that super-human knack of having the brilliant flash of insight that is so prevalent in books on selling. Sure, given several days to think about it, the writer of a sales book can always come up with a solution to a sales problem. But how does that help you when confronted face-to-face with a question that must be answered now? This book will show you that you don`t need such skills.

This book can truly revolutionize your selling career ~ but only because it will show you that you no longer need to waste your time developing skills that are of no value to a salesman. For example, here are some of the points that will be made in the course of this book:

-- Contrary to the accepted mythology, enthusiasm is not a virtue; it destroys more sales than it creates.
-- "Positive thinking" is an unrealistic fallacy. The salesman who thinks negatively has a far greater chance for success than the so-called "positive thinker."
-- Sales success does not come from convincing people to buy things they don`t want.
-- The salesman who always has an answer for every objection is also probably plugging along with a very low income.
-- Extroverts don`t make the best salesmen; they are invariably outsold by introverts.
-- To be a good salesman, you don`t have to be a "smooth talker".
-- Another all-time sales fallacy is the statement "When the going gets tough, the tough get going". When the going gets tough, I usually take a vacation.
-- The desire to be able to motivate others is unrealistic and foolish. A really-great salesman will never try to motivate anyone.

Perhaps all of this sounds so far removed from what you`ve heard about selling through the years that you wonder how it could possibly be true. I intend to demonstrate the validity of these statements in two ways.

First, my own experience verifies their worth. Almost invariably, in any selling experience where I`ve found myself, I have outsold everyone else around me ~ usually while working far fewer hours.

In addition, I`ve seen these principles work for a few others, too ~ a very few, for they are unknown to most people.

But there is nothing mysterious about them ~ and that brings us to second way in which I will demonstrate their validity. I will prove them to you. We will deal with life logically and carefully in this book. Everything will be proven in terms of the real world as it is ~ in ways we can both understand.