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The Dirty Secret of Selling
Featured Author:
Paul McCord
Author, speaker, trainer, consultant, and one of the country’s leading authorities on prospecting, referral generation, and personal marketing, Paul McCord has had a distinguished career in teaching, sales, sales training, and sales management. A magna cum laude graduate of Texas A&M University, Commerce, with graduate studies at Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth, Paul began his career teaching literature at his alma mater. Though he enjoyed the challenge of teaching, his competitive nature lead him to the business world where he could more fully utilize his selling and training talents.
Paul’s Sales and Sales Management Blog is regularly picked up in syndication by Fox Business News, Nielsen Business Media, Hoovers, Reuters and other major business and industry sites.
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Paul McCord
How often have you heard the hype that if you just buy this list of prospects your problems will be solved, or if you’ll just get this book, pay $899 for this sales ‘secret,’ or use this sales system you’ll only have to work three days a week?
How many websites have you gone to that have a never ending sales pitch with ‘testimonial’ after ‘testimonial’ about what a great book or system is being offered that will change your sales career forever–but doesn’t give the slightest idea of what you’re going to buy for only $79.95?
How many promises of THE sales secret, the AMAZING OVERNIGHT results you’ll get with THIS process, the UNBELIEVABLE income from this technique that only the most successful salespeople know, or the BREAKTHROUGH system that GUARANTEES your sales success have you seen? Hundreds? Thousands?
We’ve all seen them. Probably at least every week if not every day. The ads, the claims, the promises are everywhere. It used to be there was a huckster on every corner, now there’s at least one on every Google search results page.
You know why they’re there don’t you? They’re there because we want them to be there. We encourage them by going to their webpages, by buying their products, by believing–no desperately hoping that there’s really, truly a secret that if we just knew would make selling so easy and profitable that our lives would be complete. No more cold calling. No more unkept appointments. No more rejection. No more worry. No more depression. We’d never have to put in 60, 70, 80 hours again.
If we just knew.
If it just existed—and it must exist because there are so many out there telling us it does exist and we see the successful salespeople who seem to have it all (and so easily, too!).
Those guys gotta know something we don’t know.
If we only knew.
We’d pay almost anything to find it, to learn it, to be able to have the easy life like those lucky big producers who bought or stumbled upon the secret.
Yep, we’re why those hucksters exist. Because we want them to—because we DEMAND they exist.
And the funny thing is we’re right–there really is a secret that if we just learn it and implement it will change our sales careers forever.
The best part is we don’t even have to pay for it.
barcodeguy
about 1 month ago
12 comments
After 25 years in sales, and hearing and seeing everything you mention, I absolutely agree. YOU ARE 100% CORRECT. I have always said that luck is where preparation and opportunity meet. After ten years with a company, I recently was downsized in favor of website ordering and ordertakers. Everything is based on lowest price,fill your shopping cart model, and the company is wondering why profits have tanked.