Surviving in Hard Times

One of the easiest professions to survive in during hard times is the sales profession. I will have to admit that when I first started selling for a living that the times were very hard and unemployment was very high.

I was just a naive youngster at the time and honestly did not know times were as hard as they were.

I really had no interest in the news and seldom read the newspapers or watched TV, so I just learned to put everything I had into my presentations and the prospects wanted my product so badly that they just could not say no.

I remember one of my first sales, where the husband of the family said they did have the ten dollars for the down payment but no way could they afford the payments they would have to make to buy the product.

I just looked at him and said there was bound to be a way they could come up with the twenty or so dollars a month to meet the payment and he and his wife would have to come up with a way to do it.

There was not going to be any discussion about whether or not they were going to buy tonight, only what they would have to do to make sure the twenty dollars or so would be available when the payment was due each month.

The husband and wife discussed several different options but none of which were acceptable to them but all of a sudden the husband had an ah-ha moment.

He said he would be getting a raise in about three months that would take care of the payment and in the mean time they would just cancel the home telephone.

(This made sense to me!)

This might not be a big deal now with all of the family having cell phones but this was in 1962 and the home phone was the life blood of the family communications at the time.

His wife agreed to do this and they signed all of the paper work so they could enhance the education of their children.

The product I was selling at the time, was in my opinion, the best encyclopedia, bar none, on the market.

The husband and wife were ecstatic at being able to solve this problem in their lives and hugged each other right there on the couch in front of me.

I felt great at being able to provide such service to the family.
To my knowledge the family never regretted the decision they made either and went on to raise happy, healthy well informed children who most likely turned out to be great successes at what ever they wound up doing in life.

This was a great experience for me as well, as I went on to make sale after sale by using this story as a rebuttal when a prospective family would say to me that they could not afford it.

I think my most power came from the fact that this family had sold me on the idea that if the reason for owning the product was strong enough then the way to afford the product would present itself.

After that when a family would say they could not afford what I was selling, I would think to my self, you just think you can't afford what I am selling and would go on to make the sale anyway.

True, I never had another family that gave up the home phone to buy encyclopedias but the story sure made them realize the fact that they could figure out a way to make the payments if they really wanted to and guess what, they did.

For more information on how to get motivated and really get down to business and make more sales just go to my website
http://www.thesellingfool.com

Thank you,
Billy J Gibson
thesellingfoolbjg@yahoo.com
http://www.thesellingfool.com/

thesellingfoolbjg@yahoo.com/