The Secret of Selling Anything

157 Pages·2008·0.69 MB·English

by  Harry Browne

The Secret of Selling
—
Anything
A road map to success for the salesman…
who is not aggressive
who is not a “smooth talker”
and who is not an extrovert
Harry Browne
THE SECRET OF SELLING ANYTHING © 2008
by Harry Browne.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles or reviews.
For information, contact: [email protected]
Internet edition: 2008
Also by Harry Browne
How You Can Profit from the Coming Devaluation (1970)
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (1973)
You Can Profit from a Monetary Crisis (1974)
The Complete Guide to Swiss Banks (1976)
New Profits from the Monetary Crisis (1978)
Inflation-Proofing Your Investments (with Terry Coxon, 1981)
Investment Rule #1 (1985)
Why the Best-Laid Investment Plans Usually Go Wrong (1987)
The Economic Time Bomb (1989)
Why Government Doesn’t Work (1995, 2003)
Fail-Safe Investing (1995, 2003)
The Great Libertarian Offer (2000)
Liberty A to Z (2004)
2000+ Libertarian Quotes (2007)
Investment Strategy in an Uncertain World (2008)
Freedom The American Way (2008)
The Secret of Selling Anything: Contents
Introduction
Prologue
Part I — The Secret of Success
1. This is Your World
2. The Story of Life
3. How Men Profit
4. How Men Succeed
5. Whom Must You Please
6. What Are You Selling
7. The Secret of Success

Part II — Selling is Easy
8. Selling is Easy
9. The Impossible Sale
10. The Secret of Motivation
11. First Things First
12. The Terms of The Sale
13. Now — You Can Start Talking
14. Problems are no Problem
15. Closing is Easy
16. What is a Salesman?
17. Selling in the Real World
18. Even Telephoning is Easy?
19. The Care & Feeding of Customers
20. The Elimination of Fear
21. Listen, Listen, Listen!
22. Selling is Everywhere
23. How To Begin
24. Selling is Easy

About the Author
Introduction
This book is a compilation of two unpublished manuscripts (The Secret of
Success and Selling is Easy) written by Harry Browne in 1966 and 1969. He was
thirty-three and thirty-six years of age at the time and a sales consultant and
lecturer in the Los Angeles area.
He had twenty years of successful selling and sales management behind him.
He had written folders and booklets on salesmanship and economics. He had
authored the courses “The Art of Profitable Living” and “The Economics of
Success” — which had received excellent market acceptance in Southern
California. His weekly newspaper column, “The American Way,” was being
published in 110 newspapers. And he was in demand as a speaker, consultant
and writer — all of which had been accomplished with no more than a high
school education.
Harry was not the stereotypical hard-driving, constantly-on-the-go success
seeker, however. In fact, he had found a way to make an unusually good income
as a salesman while working only fifteen to twenty hours per week. This allowed
him the luxury of enjoying his non-professional interests — classical music,
opera, good food and wine, sports, television, and writing.
Because he had never wanted to be an “average” salesman, he had paid
particular attention to the top successes he had met along the way — observing
them closely to determine the nature of success. In so doing, he had come to
understand why people buy and the world around him. And he had found that
the principles he had observed applied to any type of success-seeking — whether
or not in the sales field.
Every word in this book was written by him from his own successful
experience. And although the manuscripts remained unpublished until now it is
an example of his ability to communicate to others the knowledge he’d gained
early on.
I hope you enjoy it!
Best wishes,
Pamela Wolfe Browne
Pamela Wolfe Browne
Prologue
If you’ve read other selling books, you’re probably tired of the false
promises that never quite work out. You’re probably tired of being told “you can
do it if you just believe you can.”
You’re probably tired of reading about tricks that made a particular sale —
tricks that may have been appropriate to a particular situation, but not yours —
and even if they were appropriate, how would you have thought of them at the
right time?
If you’ve read books on selling before or listened to “sales experts”, you’re
probably tired of being pumped with hot air — told how you must “come alive”,
be full of enthusiasm, dominate the world around — all the things that don’t
happen to be a part of your basic nature.
Well, this book isn’t anything like that. In fact, this book was written to
refute many clichés of selling that have been accepted without question for
years.
This book will prove to you, I hope, that the stereotyped image of the “born
salesman” is a mistake. You don’t have to remake your personality and become
super-enthusiastic, super-aggressive, domineering. Not only are those traits not
necessary, they are actually a hindrance to making sales.
And you won’t have to develop that uncanny ability to come up with the
right answer at the right time — that super-human knack of having the brilliant
flash of insight that is so prevalent in books on selling. Sure, given several days
to think about it, the writer of a sales book can always come up with a solution to
a sales problem. But how does that help you when confronted face-to-face with a
question that must be answered now? This book will show you that you don’t
need such skills.
This book can truly revolutionize your selling career — but only because it
will show you that you no longer need to waste your time developing skills that
are of no value to a salesman. For example, here are some of the points that will
be made in the course of this book:
1. Contrary to the accepted mythology, enthusiasm is not a virtue; it
destroys more sales than it creates.

2. “Positive thinking” is an unrealistic fallacy. The salesman who thinks
negatively has a far greater chance for success than the so-called
“positive thinker.”
3. Sales success does not come from convincing people to buy things they
don’t want.

4. The salesman who always has an answer for every objection is also
probably plugging along with a very low income.

5. Extroverts don’t make the best salesmen; they are invariably outsold by
introverts.

6. To be a good salesman, you don’t have to be a “smooth talker.”

7. Another all-time sales fallacy is the statement “When the going gets
tough, the tough get going”. When the going gets tough, I usually take a
vacation.

8. The desire to be able to motivate others is unrealistic and foolish. A
really-great salesman will never try to motivate anyone.

Perhaps all of this sounds so far removed from what you’ve heard about
selling through the years that you wonder how it could possibly be true. I intend
to demonstrate the validity of these statements in two ways.
First, my own experience verifies their worth. Almost invariably, in any
selling experience where I’ve found myself, I have outsold everyone else around
me — usually while working far fewer hours.
In addition, I’ve seen these principles work for a few others, too — a very
few, for they are unknown to most people.
But there is nothing mysterious about them — and that brings us to a second