This is why, the students, employees, or perhaps companies need to have reading habit for books. It will include more understanding of you to life and also function much better. What are you waiting for? Set yourself apart from the crowd! From products to services, everyone is consuming less as they tighten their belts. In this respect, it's easy to forget that the job interview is becoming more and more like the showroom—where the interview itself is the pitch, and the product you're selling is yourself.
The Art of Selling Yourself will provide you with the knowhow you need to navigate today's tough business terrain and achieve success in your career and your life. It shows exactly how uniquely successful people—from Mark Zuckerberg to Warren Buffett—have achieved success, and provides you with the latest management knowledge from leading academies and universities.
With an easy-to-use, ten-step process, this book will assist you in:. They have been selected as one of twenty businesses worldwide by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to be part of a yearlong program to build the entrepreneurial scene in New York. It was originally published in the United Kingdom under the title 'Buy Me! The content of the book is, as you might tell, about how to sell yourself in business situations such as interviews, ideas and public relations and how to sell yourself if you are an entrepreneur and needing to sell your concept to potential markets.
It takes you step by step from there to show you how to present yourself in a way that people want to buy you your services, idea, or work with your company. While some of this book is not ground breaking or new to this genre I did enjoy it quite a bit. I think everyone will get many takeaways and the book will help you develop confidence, show you how to network, show you how to have a conversation with someone in a way that you can better relate, get out of your comfort zone, and get up from setbacks and move on to the next sell.
I also like the step by step format which makes this an easy read and helps you work on one concept at a time. Networking with the wealthy is not like networking with the less-affluent. Stanley provides a proven road map for building trust, securing interest, and forging profitable relationships with wealthy audiences-including tactics for boosting your credibility and assuring continued loyalty among wealthy customers.
This book is essential reading material for anyone whose target market includes the affluent. Stanley also builds on his research from The Millionaire Next Door and takes us further into the psyche of the American millionaire.
Stanley focuses in on the top one percent of households in America and tells us the motor behind the engine; what makes them tick. His findings on how these families reached such financial success are based on in-depth surveys and interviews with more than thirteen hundred millionaires. Stanley tells us that the typical millionaire had an average GPA and frugal spending habits—but good interpersonal skills.
Srun shows how the psychology of luxury brands truly plays into high value customer motivations and unlocks the potential to understand their decision processes which are unlike that of any other customer. Francis Srun has twenty years experience in the luxury industry, based in France, Switzerland, China and Hong Kong, most recently with Maison Boucheron. The true luxury attitude is not submissive nor is it hauteur — it is gentle, generous and simply, truly human.
Success comes from not just being professional but from building a genuinely luxury relationship with clients. To do that you need to truly understand your client. High value customers today are younger, international in outlook and residence, and increasingly from Asia. Their buying motivation is always about self-affirmation and pleasure and never about money. They should have perused my file, reviewed my past x-rays, and had a better understanding of me, my teeth, and my dental goals.
When you can sell someone on the concept of a high-tech enter- tainment center, the exact functional features and pricing become less important. You must become a consultant who understands how to create different types of entertainment environments, even if it involves products you do not sell. Then your knowledge be- comes part of the value that your customer buys, and you have es- tablished an ongoing relationship.
That becomes the framework within which the seven pieces of the affluent sales environment puzzle fit and blend together to establish exactly the right sales en- vironment for that individual. Tom says that learning how to listen was one of the most important lessons he learned. These are suc- cessful people, and they want to be treated differently.
When they ask for home office furni- ture, we can offer a multitude of choices to help them create a coordinated configuration. Most photographers try to either compete with high-volume retail store portrait studios or find their own niche in the better paying upscale market. Typical customers make major portrait investments five to six times over the years.
They become life- long clients. Concept selling has changed all that for one dealer. If the client is buying new window coverings, chances are there are other things in the works—such as new flooring, furniture, and wall cover- ings. This dealer knows that beauty and pride in their home are important to all affluent homeowners, so the salespeople focus on selling the homeowner on the concept of a beauti- ful room. You will need to seek every opportunity to go to them and strategically place yourself in their path, focusing on their agenda instead of your agenda, so that you do not run the risk of not connecting with your affluent prospect, customer, or patient.
We discuss how to accomplish that in Chapter 5, but first in Chapter 4, we look at the common roadblock of social self- consciousness that may be keeping you from going down that path. SUMMARY From the incidents described in Chapter 2, we can identify 10 ways to drive affluent customers and clients away: neglect, poor quality service, complacency and inefficiency, inconvenience, technical de- ficiencies, being manipulative, being deceptive, telling rather than listening, using too much technical jargon, and being impersonal.
You must create an affluent sales environment that is built on seven principles: proactive relationship building, convenience, seamless selling, upscale quality, Ritz-Carlton level service, FedEx level efficiency, and integrity.
Concept selling is the heart and soul of an affluent sales environ- ment. Effec- tive conceptual selling places a premium on aesthetic value and re- lationships, making functional features and pricing less important. Waiting for the affluent to walk in your door is not enough. You must seek every opportunity to place yourself in their path. You must place yourself in their path—and your first step is to find out where to go.
You will learn exactly how to do that in Chapter 5. If so, think for a moment about what you have already learned. We described the affluent opportunity and discovered that this targeted group controls approximately 89 percent of all the liquid assets in the United States.
In Chapter 2, you had an opportunity to pry open the lid and take a peek into the affluent mind. Building on that insight, Chap- ter 3 explained how to build the right sales environment to attract, sell, and retain the loyalty of affluent customers and clients.
By now, you no doubt realize that the opportunity to sell products and services to the affluent is like manna from heaven. Most likely, your firm has invested heavily to make certain that the products and services you sell provide the features and bene- fits the affluent want most. Corporate training departments are busy arming their salespeople you with the product knowledge and sales techniques necessary to present all the bells and whistles. Your stars are aligned, and everyone is excited—right?
Not necessarily. Become invisible and slip into the showrooms and sales offices where salespeople are being afforded this remark- able opportunity. With just a quick glance, you could easily be fooled.
Larry, a financial advisor, blessed me with three hours of per- sonal conversation on a flight to Las Vegas. He had the gift of gab, and it did not take him long to discover that I was up to my ears in research about the affluent. I, on the other hand, was curious about how Larry was marketing himself to the affluent. What began as a series of questions from Larry to me resulted in a very fascinating flight. But I continue to find excuses to avoid affluent people.
Larry was not only suffering from social self-consciousness but also was one of the few salespeople who are acutely aware of it and willing to talk about it. Granted, he was talking to me after learning that I had expertise in the arena of the affluent. For some strange reason, it makes me feel good. Larry had previously been married to a physician.
Hello, social self-consciousness! In lay sales terms, you might want to call it affluent sales reluctance. They go on to describe the negative impact it can have on an otherwise healthy sales career when a salesperson shifts his or her emphasis to up-market clients. Dudley explains the significance of social self-consciousness this way: One reason social self-consciousness is such a dangerous form of sales call reluctance is that it flies well under the radar of all but one sales selection test.
All other forms are left unbothered. That means candidates may not be shy, timid, or even inexperienced. Their other prospecting skills may dazzle recruiters. No one is born with social self-conscious call reluctance—it is learned—and it is highly contagious. Often it is confused with low self-esteem and low assertiveness. Their research shows that social self-consciousness is conta- gious. Obviously, none of this is really important until you begin to target the affluent.
Whether you or your company initiated the shift upscale is not the issue. The impact is the same. The issue is the amount of emotional stress you experience when contacting, or even thinking about contacting, someone of wealth, prestige, power, education, or social standing. In fact, people with social self-consciousness tend to read more self-help books than the average salesperson.
The studies show that all those books and tapes and seminars will not help with this issue. Surprisingly, social self-consciousness is most common in vet- eran salespeople. Here is a conversation I had following a keynote speech with two financial professionals, successful and year veterans, respectively.
We have a very well-run practice, know how to sell, and offer a valuable service. All we need is for someone to help us find and attract more affluent prospects. At the same time, both Bob and Luke were in denial. The fact was, both were in daily contact with affluent prospects.
Bob was a member of the wealthiest church in their area, and Luke belonged to the Rotary Club, which included every powerful person in the entire region among its members. Not only that: Both had high-profile leadership roles in their respective organizations. You could not orchestrate a better scenario! When I laughed and suggested that it would not be fair for me to accept their money when they were already in front of affluent prospects, it was clear that they did not appreciate my humor.
I introduced the issue of social self-consciousness and ex- plained that I would consider a coaching relationship but that my first task would be to help them break through that barrier and capitalize on the gold mine right there in front of them.
They both pushed back hard and fast. It is not difficult to envision how the affluent sales environment described in Chapter 3 could be applied to each one of these in- dustries.
If social self-consciousness impacts such a broad spec- trum, you can also be confident that it is holding otherwise competent salespeople back in every other industry that is target- ing the affluent. The bad news is that without proper intervention, there is an 87 percent chance that social self-consciousness will plague you throughout your sales career. But there is also really good news. Dudley and Goodson suggest that when this form of call reluctance is detected early and the proper remedy is provided, it is relatively easy to correct.
In fact, it took a bit of persuading, but Bob and Luke finally acknowledged their problem and asked me to help them. Like many financial advisors today, Bob and Luke wanted to max- imize their earning potential, and they realized that they had to be selling to the affluent to accomplish that goal.
Their social self- consciousness initially caused them to be in denial. Because they both associated with affluent people socially on a daily basis, nei- ther could believe they were affected by social self-consciousness.
Although the bylaws in their respective organizations forbade so- liciting business, it took an honest and close inspection to uncover the fact that members of these prestigious organizations did dis- creetly conduct business with one another. If you see a bit of yourself in the preceding example, you should be aware that this is not a case of low self-esteem, low goal motiva- tion, or a lack of assertiveness.
There are other segments of the market. As Dudley and Goodson helpfully point out, these emotional boundaries are all self-inflicted, which means they can be over- come—with effort.
The first step is to make a quick assessment to determine whether social self-consciousness might be something that is holding you back. Otherwise, the effort has little value. Is social self-consciousness a problem with you? There are only two options—yes or no. So take a deep breath, read each of the statements in the table on page 65, and circle YES or NO for each statement. The key issue is this: How large a blockage is social self-conscious- ness in holding you back from enthusiastically reaching your goals?
Nobody likes to admit to a weakness, especially when it involves intimidation. As a result, there is a tendency for some sales professionals to rationalize everything, trying to convince themselves that they have no prob- lem when they are face-to-face with an affluent prospect.
I observed an example of this rationalization when I was asked to spend time with a father-daughter wealth management team to discuss their business development efforts.
The father had devel- oped a healthy asset base. His daughter, armed with an MBA and technology savvy, was fairly new in the business. On the surface, their issue was getting the father to become more active in devel- oping new business. We both need to do a better job of getting in front of affluent prospects. But only after con- fronting them would they admit that I was right. Both were suffer- ing from social self-consciousness, and the daughter was still fumbling with excuses as I left.
I have set goals that involve selling to the affluent, but I have not been able to achieve them. YES NO 2. When pushed, I frequently give some reason why I am not interested in pushing myself. YES NO 3. I often feel uneasy in the presence of people I view as having wealth, power, prestige, and fame. YES NO 4. I sometimes catch myself being somewhat tongue-tied when conversing with people of wealth and prestige. YES NO 5. I must admit that I tend to exaggerate the power, prestige, and influence of people with wealth.
YES NO 6. There are times when I talk down to and treat people in support positions worse than I should—to make them feel the way I do around people of power and influence. YES NO 7. I need and want to be proactive in selling to the affluent, but I really feel stuck. This was a curious objection considering she was al- ready working close to 10 hours every working day. Remember, honesty is essential. Whether you will be on the golf course, at a church committee meeting, or bumping into an affluent prospect through a carefully or- chestrated coincidental meeting at your local Starbucks—if you can visualize a successful encounter in your mind, the image you create will have a positive impact on your results.
Top athletes and actors have used this type of visualization or mental rehearsal for years. The key is to not allow those feelings of apprehension to keep you from doing what you need to do.
Mental signal: I have had clients experience good results by visualizing a candle flame whenever they sense doubt or feel nervous. Simply visualize a candle flame in your mind, take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and feel anxiety flush out of your system as you exhale. Rubber band: Place a rubber band around your wrist. When you catch a negative thought or feeling entering your mind, stop it by snapping the rubber band back of your hand, not underneath.
Those negative thoughts will stop immediately. Positive affirmations: Whenever you catch yourself having a negative thought, replace it with a positive affirmation. These techniques work because they serve to realign your thoughts.
Most, if not all, of our negative feelings and anxiety are caused by the view we take of situations, not the situations them- selves. If we keep thinking about all the bad things that might hap- pen, our body accepts those thoughts as truth because it cannot distinguish fact from fiction. It is important at this point to beware of ego interference and pride. But, if it exists, admit it. Then do something about it.
Regardless, this is not the only challenge you face. Programming your mind for success can be critically important. Everything you are today is the result of your collective thinking up to this point. Everything you will become will be the result of the content of your thoughts from this point forward.
The idea behind conscious thought management is that if you want to experience success in sales, you will dramatically increase your probability of success if you take action to concentrate on that mental picture until it becomes reality. The first three are very easy to implement and can and should be done each day. The fourth will take more preparation, but after that, it, too, is easy to implement. Technique 1: Starting Out Right During the first hour after awakening, the subconscious mind is more amenable to new programming than at any other time.
I feel great! Do not listen to the news or any- thing that might stimulate negative thinking. We are all energy forces, and it is your responsibility to make certain that your en- ergy is not only positive but also infectious. Those are the times that we are most susceptible to negative self-talk, especially if we have just had a negative experience with a prospect, a customer complaint, or are simply struggling with social self-consciousness.
You need more than caffeine to recharge your energy forces during the course of a day. Technique 3: Associating with the Right People The people that we associate with often have the greatest influence on us. So, if you are serious about becoming affluent through your sales efforts, it is important to associate with people who will pos- itively reinforce your thoughts and efforts.
This is easier said than done. Consequently, they are envious of anyone who they think is paying the price. What this means is that you must be able to detect a jealous saboteur quickly and avoid that person like the plague. Whether it requires avoiding a new associate or adding someone new to your reference group, make your associations a choice—and choose carefully.
The best way to take heed of this warning is to replace any garbage in with a habit of daily self-affirmation. It requires initial effort to write and record a CD or tape that you can play over and over, but it will be worth it. Creating a self- affirmation CD or tape is simple. To achieve this balance, I suggest you develop your affirmation statements including three to four statements focused on areas re- lating to affluent sales success and three to four statements focused on any combination of the following: physical health, mental health, spiritual, marriage, family, social, educational, personal growth.
The words you select for your affirmation statements are im- portant. I have. I enjoy. I love. Do not say: My manager will praise me when I make an af- fluent sale.
Leave your problems behind: Do not say: I am no longer worrying about my physical health. Say: I am healthy and fit.
This will probe your subconscious mind to act automatically as if what you are saying is reality: Do not say: I will become knowledgeable about the wealthy small business owners in our area.
Say: I am knowledgeable about the wealthy small business owners in our area. People not using conscious thought management tend not to understand. Some may even try to sabotage your efforts, even though they say they are trying to help you.
By keeping your affirmation statements to yourself, you will be able to say what you really want to say. Here are three steps you can use to write each of your seven af- firmation statements: 1. Think of a dimension of your life that you want to change.
Write that change area on a piece of paper. Imagine yourself in a situation where you have already made that change and are enjoying the results. Describe that image next. Use what you imagined to guide you in writing a powerful affirmation statement as shown in the box on the top of page I am full of confidence and positive energy, and I make natural eye contact when shaking hands.
My use of re- verse psychology in suggesting that we both need to discover whether there is a fit causes the prospect to compliment my professionalism.
Affirmation statement: I am confident and able to bring high energy to each encounter with HNW prospects. Carry those cards with you everywhere you go. Conscious thought management is only a part of the solution.
The other component is action. I do not know whether Larry acted on the action plan that I helped him develop. On the other hand, I can tell you it took Bob and Larry less than a month and three chal- lenging conference calls with me to make their breakthrough. Al- though they were targeting different affluent centers of influence, through the combination of conscious thought management sup- ported by specific action steps that were different for each, they were able to overcome their social self-consciousness together.
You also need to walk the talk so that your affirmation is consistent with your action. No one is born with social self-consciousness. It is learned, and it is highly contagious. When it is identified accurately and the proper remedy is pro- vided, it is relatively easy to correct. You probably wrestle with social self-consciousness if you set prospecting and sales goals relating to the affluent market and then fail to follow through. We know from experience that social self-consciousness is a major contributor to allowing those gaps to exist.
Your first step is to be totally honest with yourself on this issue. Your next step is to take appropriate action to overcome any social self-consciousness that may be blocking your road to success in three phases: preparation, mental rehearsal, and action. It will benefit you only if you are totally honest with yourself. Select and begin implementing those you feel will help you the most. It will take time to create those affirmations, but this technique often helps more than any of the other three.
Using the mental rehearsal step and action step techniques to reinforce those efforts, you will be surprised how quickly any social self- consciousness you have will become a thing of the past. They became great friends, and two of them, Alex Karas and John Gordy, were ushers at my wedding.
In my big game, as the quarterback, you will remember that I lost 32 yards in four plays. Very humiliating. He listened to them talk intimately about the game they loved, not from a distance, but as one who participated with them. He became great friends with them and especially with the two who were ushers at his wedding. It took great determi- nation to put his feelings of intimidation aside and become in- volved in all that physical contact.
That is very different from the cri- teria that impact getting you face-to-face with a potential major purchaser. George Plimpton might have been referred to the De- troit Lions by a trusted friend, but the only way he would have been allowed to actually play on the team would be if he possessed the right skill package after a brutal tryout. In other words, his fea- tures and benefits as a football player, carefully evaluated and compared against others, would be the determining criteria, not whom George Plimpton knew.
The same is true in your world, ex- cept you have a much better chance of possessing the features and benefits necessary to get the business. Becoming one with the Lions was as far as it went for George Plimpton.
He never aspired to become one of them, nor did he have the ability to make the team if he wanted to. That is not the case with you. From there, it will only be a matter of time as your opportunities, goals, and selling activities transform your aspirations into reality.
We pointed out earlier that many in the affluent and super-rich categories are businesspeople and experienced professionals. That was confirmed by our research. That includes salespeople.
If they could achieve that level of success, so can you. There is no practice field for you. You need to go to the playing field where real things are happening for the affluent in your community. Your goal is to become involved with them in the things that are important to them, because you definitely know by now that sitting and waiting for them to come to you is a bad choice.
This goes beyond simply joining organizations. Many salespeople join the right organizations but rarely attend func- tions, let alone become involved with other members in impor- tant activities. There are many organizations you can consider joining, and we will list a number of them.
First, however, it is important to estab- lish a list of criteria to use in selecting the best types of organiza- tions for you. Do the activities and events attract wealthy individuals? Some organizations have wealthy people on their rolls, but not at their functions.
Does this organization provide opportunities to meet new people at least monthly? That includes meetings, activities, and social events. Some organizations schedule events two to four times a year, and that is not enough. Are they recognized as a gathering place for the wealthy?
Do their purpose and goals capture your interest? Are they viewed as making a positive contribution to the community? Avoid organizations that embroil themselves in controversial issues. Can you afford to be involved? Go beyond basic member- ship fees and check the typical cost of monthly meetings, special events, and expected contributions to any fund- raising activities.
There are a number of organizations that would typically meet your criteria. When making that decision, our re- search clearly shows that they give the greatest credibility to the suggestions and opinions of their immediate family and trusted friends.
As I stated earlier in this chapter, there is a distinct differ- ence between what impacts the decision of which suppliers to con- tact and what impacts the final purchase decision. Many a salesperson has lost business because he or she failed to make this distinction. Getting a quality referral or introduction is great, but assuming that a referred affluent prospect is going to conduct business with you because of this referral is foolish.
Be- cause you know it has very little impact on the final decision, you will then proceed carefully to uncover exactly what prospects want, all the bells and whistles included. From there you can guide them in making their decision to conduct business with you. As we emphasize there, that pro- cess actually begins here. Selecting the organization s that will be best for you is your first step toward becoming that trusted friend that affluent members go to, especially when it comes to the prod- ucts and services you offer.
The key is to narrow down your list and focus. After you determine where you should become involved, the question is how and when. Start by making a list of meetings and events you will attend and entering them into your day planner. Here is what you should do: Event Preparation Checklist 1. Plan your involvement. Determine who will be there, what your networking objectives will be, and what you need to take. Show up early.
Arrive ready to network, and stop at the en- trance to plan your first move. Walk the room at least twice. Become familiar with the area and who is there, especially if the event is held in a large room. Stay alert. Resist the temptation to escape with someone you know. Target those you want to meet. Home The Art of Selling to the Affluent. Selling to the Affluent Author : Thomas J.
Marketing to the Affluent Author : Thomas J.
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