Zig Ziglar’s mastery-level sales and business techniques are being brought back to life by Kevin Harrington, and every entrepreneur needs this.
Zig Ziglar, author of the “Sales Bible” was an inspiring, honest, and authentic sales mentor. Zig knew that in order for people to be in business, they had to be able to close the sale. And in order for them to be able to close the sale, they had to be trustworthy. In order for them to be trustworthy, he knew they needed to be authentic. And in order for them to be authentic, they had to believe in what they were doing.
Zig knew the secrets of closing the sale had more to do with the customer than the sales person. He was ahead of his time when it came to tactics that brought the customer in, wallet in hand. Things like transparency, trust, authenticity, passion, have become a lost art so I think it’s time we go back to our timeless selling roots and take a look at what this master of closing the sale can teach us.
Luckily, We Have That Opportunity
Kevin Harrington and partner Mark Timm, who looked to Zig as a mentor, have exclusive rights to bring back the content that will change the future of selling and help us reconnect to the foundation of selling that is so important.
If You Can’t Sell, You Can’t Survive
Every entrepreneur/designer/inventor has to be able to sell. If you can’t sell, you can’t survive. If you have an idea, you have to sell that idea to the world, or it will die as an idea. Selling is not one-dimensional. Selling touches every part of your business. This is an important realization for entrepreneurs. As Zig Ziglar often said…
“Everyone is in sales. Whether it’s selling a product, an idea, a service, helping support your favorite cause, or even getting your child to eat his or her green beans, everyone is always selling something.”
If You Can’t Build Trust, You Can’t Sell
The obvious next step in this sales progression is, not only recognizing the importance of selling, but also understanding how to sell, and to understand how to sell, we have to talk about trust.
We are swimming in information overload. What the customer needs, is not more information, they are looking for trust. If we go back, to Ziglar’s original model, we can see that trust was the center point of sales, and right now, people are desperately craving trust. No matter how good your product or design is, there has to be trust in that product.
Bottom line: This timeless wisdom has been lost, and then people wonder why their product doesn’t thrive in the marketplace. The trust has to be built in to the product and the sales process.
Why Is Trust So Important?
The future is going into products and brands people can trust because our market is saturated, and the hassle isn’t worth it. We wanted more options, we shopped for the cheapest item, we didn’t care about the life of the product, until now. We wanted easy information, lots of product choices, and the most bang for our buck. But now, everything is easy, shopping is always at our fingertips, and the options seem endless, so we aren’t looking for easy anymore. We are looking for reliable, trustworthy, and authentic value.
This Market Shift Will Happen Because It’s What Consumers Want
With this shift to building in trust, we will also challenge and shift the way we view sales. Whatever sales looks like in your mind right now, needs to shift so it looks like a passionate, authentic, transparent, and enthusiastic entrepreneur who believes in what they are saying with everything they are. You can’t fake this and you can’t build fake trust. If you aren’t legitimate, your customer will know and you won’t make the sale.
It’s Time to Get Real About Closing the Sale
One of the greatest sales closers, speakers, and motivators in history had it right, and we need to bring back to life his secrets, to build trust and relationships back into our growing digital world. The consumer retail sales model of the future has to include connecting in authentic ways and trust in those connections, followed by trust in products and the people who make them.
Read the original INC article published on December 20, 2017.
