Tim Ikels

Tim Ikels

Creator, Publisher, Marketer. Freedom advocate.

No B.S. Sales Success By Dan S. Kennedy

These are my personal book notes of No B.S. Sales Success In The New Economy by the author and marketing legend Dan S. Kennedy.

My book notes on No B.S. Business Success from the same author can be found here.

Let’s dive in.

Facts

  • Title: No B.S. Sales Success In The New Economy
  • Subtitle: Meet The New Economy Customer, Master 15 Trust-Building Sales Strategies, Get Past Any “No”
  • Author: Dan S. Kennedy
  • Author’s website: nobsinnercircle.com
  • First published: 1993
  • Type: non fiction
  • Genre: marketing / sales
  • Rating: 5/5
  • Recommended: Yes (Hell, Yeah!)

Regardless of whether you sell B2B or to consumers, my underlying premise is to engineer a situation where you are sought out, invited in, and welcomed as an expert advisor.
- Dan S. Kennedy

Table Of Contents Of The Book

  • Praise
  • Title Page
  • Foreword
  • Preface
  • PART I - 15 NO B.S. STRATEGIES FOR EXCEPTIONAL SUCCESS IN SALES, PERSUASION, AND NEGOTIATIONS
    • CHAPTER 1 - STRATEGY 1 IMMUNITY TO THE WORD “NO” - No’s Turned into Yes’s, That’s What Master Salespeople Do
    • CHAPTER 2 - STRATEGY 2 THE POSITIVE POWER OF NEGATIVE PREPARATION - How General Patton Used the Positive Power of Negative Preparation - Who Else Uses the Positive Power of Negative Preparation?
    • CHAPTER 3 - STRATEGY 3 USE LISTENING TO INFLUENCE PEOPLE - What Are You Listening For? - How to Read Anyone’s Mind
    • CHAPTER 4 - STRATEGY 4 AVOID CONTAMINATION - How to Cheat on Your Expense Account and Other “Lessons” from the Grizzled Old Pro
    • CHAPTER 5 - STRATEGY 5 THE PROCESS OF PERSONAL PACKAGING - A Valuable Lesson from a Prejudiced Banker
    • CHAPTER 6 - STRATEGY 6 REMEMBERING WHY YOU’RE THERE
    • CHAPTER 7 - STRATEGY 7 DO EXPECTATIONS GOVERN RESULTS?
    • CHAPTER 8 - STRATEGY 8 PROOF: THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL FOR EXCEPTIONAL SUCCESS… - Proof Through Testimonials - How Dumb Salespeople Work Ten Times Harder Than They Need To and Get One-Tenth… A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words - Statistical Proof - How Much Proof Is Enough? How Much Proof Is Too Much?
    • CHAPTER 9 - STRATEGY 9 FRED HERMAN’S K.I.S.S. PRINCIPLE - The New Economy’s Chaos of Choices and New Economy Customers’ Desire for the… You Can Get Rich Making the Complicated Simple - Close the Doors on the Sales Prevention Department
    • CHAPTER 10 - STRATEGY 10 SELL MONEY AT A DISCOUNT - How to Put Money in Their Pockets and Then Set It on Fire - Becoming an “Added-Value” Sales Professional - Be Able To Say: No Other ___ Will… Creating Added Value from Thin Air - Creating Added Value at Nominal Cost
    • CHAPTER 11 - STRATEGY 11 ALWAYS COMPARE APPLES TO ORANGES - Most of the Advice You Get About Dealing with Price Resistance Is Wrong - Specialization and Customization Prevent Apples to Apples Comparisons
    • CHAPTER 12 - STRATEGY 12 IN SEARCH OF THE FREE LUNCH - How to Close the Difficult Sale with a Very Desirable Premium - Premiums and “Big Ticket Selling”
    • CHAPTER 13 - STRATEGY 13 THE MAGIC OF MYSTIQUE - Perception Is Reality: The “Story” Is the “Secret Ingredient” - Creating Your Own Mystique - How to Unmask and Still Create Mystique - Everything Old Is New Again - at Least It Better Be!
    • CHAPTER 14 - STRATEGY 14 I’D RATHER BE DUMB AND PERSISTENT THAN SMART AND IMPATIENT - How Being a Dumb Frog Got This Rookie a Veteran’s Top Income Fast - Does Success or Failure Breed Success?
    • CHAPTER 15 - STRATEGY 15 LONG DISTANCE IS NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD AS BEING THERE
  • PART II - HOW TO STOP PROSPECTING ONCE AND FOR ALL
    • CHAPTER 16 - POSITIONING, NOT PROSPECTING - Writing, Public Speaking, Publicity, Are You Just Another Salesperson? - The Final Component - “Gee, This Sounds Like a Lot of Work”
    • CHAPTER 17 - HOW TO USE “LEAD GENERATION ADVERTISING” TO ATTRACT HIGHLY… Never the Pest, Always the Welcome Guest - The “Welcome Guest Process” in Brief - How a Lead Generation Ad Works Like a “Personals” Ad - Where Do You Run Lead Generation Advertising? - The Postcard Technique - Headlines Are Important - Who Uses Lead Generation Advertising? - How to Use Lead Generation to Force Prospects to Give You Information and Grant… - The Last but First Thing You Need to Know About Lead Generation
  • PART III - A NO B.S. START-TO-FINISH STRUCTURE FOR THE SALE
    • CHAPTER 18 - THE SIX STEPS OF THE NO B.S. SALES PROCESS - Interest, Ability, Authority, Predisposition - Step One: Permission to Sell - Step Two: The Offer - Step Three: The Presentation - Step Four: Emotional Logic - Step Five: Closing the Sale - Step Six: The Morning After
  • PART IV - DUMB AND DUMBER THINGS THAT SABOTAGE SALES SUCCESS
    • CHAPTER 19 - B.S. THAT SALES MANAGERS SHOVEL ONTO SALESPEOPLE
      1. “The Answer to Your Problem Is Simple: Make More Calls.”
      2. “Everybody’s Your Prospect.”
      3. “It Is Easier to Sell to Someone Who Isn’t Interested than It Is to Find…”
      4. “Your Problem Is You’re Not Motivated.”
      5. “It’s Just a Numbers Game. Keep at It.”
      6. How to Tell a Good Sales Manager from a Bad One
    • CHAPTER 20 - SIX DUMBEST THINGS SALESPEOPLE DO TO SABOTAGE THEMSELVES
      1. Lousy Follow-Up
      2. Hanging Out with Losers
      3. Hanging Out with the Losers at the Bar, Strip Club, or Coffee Shop
      4. Wasting Time
      5. Not Creating SYSTEMS
      6. Poor Self-Discipline
  • PART V - MY BIGGEST SECRET TO EXCEPTIONAL RESULTS IN SELLING: TAKEAWAY SELLING
    • CHAPTER 21 - THE AWESOME POWER OF TAKEAWAY SELLING - Proving the Theory of Supply and Demand - How a Starving Dog Trainer Rid Her Finances of Fleas, Once and For All - A Real Estate Agent to Learn From - The Power of “Disqualification” - How Do New Economy Customers Respond to Takeaway Selling? - A Fundamental Choice
    • CHAPTER 22 - A Final Word from the Author
    • BONUS BOOK
  • PART VI
    • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    • ETERNAL TRUTHS
    • Index

Key Concepts & Ideas

Important questions to answer about your chosen market:

  • What keeps him up at night unable to sleep, bile crawling up his esophagus from frustration, anger, and resentment? (Note: Relief of pain sells more than potential gain.)
  • What does he fear and worry about most? (Note: Fear is the most powerful of all motivational forces.)
  • What overriding value is most important to him, as demonstrated by his behavior and prioritized actions, not just lip service - is it “family”, “marriage”, “career achievement”, “wealth”, “security”, what is it?

Dan S. Kennedy On Preponderance Of Proof

Preponderance Of Proof
An overwhelming quantity and quality of proof

Having a preponderance of proof makes it possible to sell with 100% effectiveness, 100% of the time.

If you want to win with every presentation of every proposition, make sure you have an overwhelming amount of proof that what you are selling is a great
deal, have an overwhelming quality of proof, and have proof that is influential.

Influential proof directly addresses the anxieties, doubts, concerns, skepticisms, interests, hopes, and desires of the individual prospect.

Dan S. Kennedy On The Use Of Testimonials

If you did nothing else as a result of this book but ten times your use of testimonials in “proving your case” to your prospects, your reading time will produce a huge return on investment.

Dan S. Kennedy On Other Proof/Evidence Ideas To Use

  • Traditional
    • Customer or client lists
    • Length of time in business
    • Past credentials, qualifications, experience
    • Financial references
    • Number of cities/countries serviced
    • Number of customers served
    • Physical demonstrations, “live” or on video
    • “Flip Books,” Binders, or Power Points presentations of testimonials used in face-to-face selling
  • Untraditional
    • “Story books”
    • Infomercial-style testimonial videos
    • Audio CD’s with interviews with testimonials
    • Toll-free 800-number “eavesdrop lines” to hear what clients or customers have called in and recorded about your product or service
    • Testimonial letters, photos, etc. presented in a website

The Author On Keeping Things Simple

Here is the best way to succeed in advertising, selling, marketing, or persuading others (regardless of who they are or how smart and sophisticated you believe they are):

Present everything in the simplest possible language and in the simplest possible form.

Dan S. Kennedy On Selling Money At A Discount

I based his entire marketing program on proving that he was offering money at a discount.

In other words, we showed the prospect such a large, compelling return on investment that he or she couldn’t say no, regardless of the price, and provided preponderance of proof that the bargain was real.

So, there is the secret magic formula, in just seven words:

Prove you offer money at a discount.

You can sell just about anything if you can show the buyer how the thing (not the buyer) pays for the purchase, how the thing is, in effect, free.

In persuading others to part with their money, your best possible approach is demonstrating that the apparent expense is not an actual expense at all; that the thing being purchased is either free or, better yet, actually pays.

Dan S. Kenendy On The Impact Of The “Who” Factor

In many cases, the single most important factor governing a sales professional’s income is who he chooses to sell to.

Not what he is selling, not its virtues and weaknesses, not its price, not competition, not his own sales skill level.

Who he chooses to sell to.

Stubborn marketers and sales professionals refuse to acknowledge how much “The Who Factor” matters, instead striving for improvement that is fundamentally unavailable from better propositions, better presentations, better skills, or greater effort.

The Autor On Becoming An “Added-Value” Sales Professional

How can you add value to your core deliverables, so as to…

  • create competitive differentiation, even create your own category of one
  • escape commoditization and price-based comparison shopping
  • make yourself more appealing to certain clients, even if customizing the “package” of core and value added services for the individual client

In simple terms, stop trying to sell what you’ve got and start selling what customers want and can’t get - at least all under one roof - anywhere else.

Be Able To Say: No Other __ Will __!

Dan S. Kennedy On “Creating Your Own Mystique”

One of the things I’ve learned in marketing as wide and diverse a variety of products and services as I have is this:

“I’ve got a secret” is one of the most powerful of all positioning statements.

People at all levels, CEO to broom-pusher, desperately want to believe in secrets - that there is some piece of information that has been kept from them, that others know but they do not, that will resolve their biggest problem or fulfill their greatest desire.

If you can reposition yourself as a seller of secrets, you instantly gain power.

Dan S. Kennedy On “Positioning, Not Prospecting”

It has been my observation that the weakest link in the selling chain for most salespeople is prospecting.

Most people can do at least an adequate job of presenting their products or services, if there’s a reasonably interested prospect in front of them.

But most of the salespeople I’ve encountered simply hate prospecting.

Consequently, they avoid it, both consciously and unconsciously, and do it only when the dire necessity of imminent starvation pushes them to it, and then they do it poorly.

And do you know what?

I hate prospecting too.

If I had to acquire my clients, my speaking engagements, my consulting assignments, and my writing prospects by prospecting, I’d be driving a cab for a living.

To me, prospecting is grubby, unpleasant work.

To me, there’s no worse way to spend time than talking to people who are not interested, are not qualified to say yes even if they were interested, and who view me as someone they have to defend themselves against.

I’m here to tell you:

I do not think you should prospect.

Especially now, in The New Economy, when potential customers and clients, by recession conditioning, step back and away from the sales professional coming toward them as if he were a drooling, rabies-infected, flea-infested dog - even when what he has to offer is of interest to them.

Traditional prospecting is going to be less productive than ever, for the foreseeable future.

Just being visibly engaged in traditional prospecting makes you glow toxic.

What you need to do is to focus on positioning.

By that I mean positioning yourself so that good, qualified prospects find out about you and seek you out to obtain your expert assistance in solving their problems… or at least feel they are finding you and seeking you out.

Incidentally, it’s perfectly okay to pursue them in follow-up, once they feel they’ve discovered you, made the first move toward you, and invited the communication.

In fact, it’s foolish and irresponsible not to follow-up.

But that first move needs to be theirs.

Why is this so important?

Because when you go to prospects and present yourself, their guard goes up.

They perceive you as someone there to get something from them.

This is when “sales resistance” sets in.

But when somebody discovers you, and takes the initiative to seek you out for your expert assistance, then that person’s guard is down.

“Sales receptiveness” rules.

Here are some opportunities for prospects to discover you:

  • Writing and being published
  • Public speaking
  • Seminars
  • (Selective) publicity

Closing Thoughts

My book notes only cover small parts of the book.

So if you like what you read, please consider buying the book from the author.

Thank you for reading and stay awesome,

Tim for Online Business Dude

PS: Start And Grow Your Own, Profitable Online Business From Scratch, Step-by-Step, Today!

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