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Author: David Yule
Excerpt from the book “87 Tips for Practical Selling”

What I love about selling is you just can’t fail. You go to see someone who isn’t buying from you and you don’t manage to sell to them. Have you failed? No — you have just found another way that doesn’t work. There are probably thousands of ways not to sell. There are many ways not to sell to every customer and prospect. You just have to keep trying something different until you find the right way.

What amazes me about selling is that good salespeople seem to tinker with their selling all the time. The very fact that you are reading this book, or any sales book, is a good indication of your quality. Poor salespeople seem to consistently use the same tactics even when they know they don’t work! `Can I help you?’ springs to mind.

In my first real job of hard selling I had left a profession to try selling which I didn’t, at that time, recognise as a profession. I called on a prospect every six weeks for more than a year. He was one of the 17% that didn’t buy (see tip no 40 — Spare Tyre).

After some time, he was getting fed up saying `no’ and he asked me why I kept calling. I was practising my skills — learning my trade. I figured if I was going to test new ways, I should test them on prospects, not on good customers. Every new thing I learned I took to him first. I figured if it would work on him, it would work on anyone.

Life is a series of lessons. If you don’t learn the first time, the lesson keeps getting repeated until you do learn.

If it isn’t working do something different.