As trite as it might sound, it is this activity that focuses and crystallizes the rest of the planning process.  If you don’t have a firm grip on what you want to accomplish and what you are going to sell to achieve your desired results, planning is a meaningless activity.  On the other hand, once…

Once the relationship is in place, the next step in the process is forming a Win-Win Agreement.  In it I offer to give you what you want in exchange for your giving me what I want.  What’s important to note here is that if the first two steps of the Win-Win process have been executed…

Those who stand between you and success (or failure) are the people you need to take through all four steps of the PRAM Model.  These are the people you need to have standing in line just waiting for the chance to do you a favor.  Although the need for this activity might seem obvious, my…

The idea behind the Win-Win Philosophy is that I get what I want by helping others get what they want and vice versa.  In a true Win-Win sales transaction, both parties come away feeling very good about the deal they have just concluded.  Both are likely to follow through on their respective promises, to look…

In order to give a customer those things that are going to motivate him to give you what you want in return, you have to know what his wants and needs are.  Unfortunately, research shows that anticipating another person’s wants and needs is not something most of us do well.  This is especially true when…

Like it or not, every one of us is a salesperson.  It’s a fact of life.  We’re all selling something whether it be our friendship, an idea, a point of view, a product, or a professional service.  The people to whom we try to sell these things are our customers.  This means that our success…

When I speak of highly successful people, I’m not referring to people who inherited their wealth or people whose lottery ticket happened to hit.  Rather, I’m talking about people like you and me who are responsible for their own success—however each of us chooses to define success.  In doing the research for this book, whenever…

Again, this step might seem obvious, but it’s one of those things that many people in selling do not do well.  Often, the tendency is to look only at this activity from a short-term perspective—to get the order.  Successful salespeople, on the other hand, take a much longer-term view of this activity.  They not only…

This chapter introduces a model of the Win-Win Negotiation process.  This is the same model featured in the book The Win-Win Negotiator, which I coauthored with Brian G. Long.  After an explanation of the model, I will show how it applies directly to the selling process. As you look at the model on the next…

Whenever I mention that the ability to negotiate is critical to success as a salesperson, I am almost always met with raised eyebrows.  And the reason for this is that negotiation is probably the most misunderstood concept in North America.  Most people tend to view negotiation as some sort of semi-ethical process that is designed…