Harvey MacKay: Sales 'secrets' combine hard work, sense and courtesy

I'm often asked for my "sales secrets." I have plenty, but they're hardly secrets. Success follows lots of hard work.

Here is my list.

• It's not how much it's worth; it's how much people think it's worth. Marketing is the art of creating conditions by which the buyer convinces himself. Nothing is more convincing than hard evidence that others want the same thing.

• Knowing something about your customer is just as important as knowing everything about your product. Know what your customers really want. Maybe it's your product; maybe it's something else, too -- recognition, respect, reliability, service or friendship.

• You are not important. Our challenge, whether we are salespeople, negotiators, managers or entrepreneurs, is to make others see the advantage and respond to our proposal. Understanding our subjects' personalities is vital.

• While you are not important, your reputation is. Everything flows from it -- customer loyalty, referrals and more.

• Apply the law of large numbers. Make yourself No. 2 to every prospect on your list, and keep adding to the list. Some at No. 1 will fail to perform, retire, die or lose their territories. If you're standing second in enough lines, sooner or later you'll move up to No. 1.

• Keep your eye on your time, not on your watch. A salesperson really has nothing to sell but her time. Her personality will win or lose accounts, but if she isn't around to provide service and be accessible to customers, she'll lose the accounts.

• Position yourself as a consultant. A good salesperson's customer doesn't regard him as a salesperson but a trusted and indispensable adviser, an auxiliary employee who is on someone else's payroll.

• Believe in yourself, even when no one else does. It doesn't matter whether "they" say you can't do it. The only thing that matters is whether you say it.

• If you don't have a destination, you'll never get there. Every person and business needs a set of basic goals and beliefs. Goals don't have to be elaborate, just realistic.

• Practice positive visualization, one of the most powerful means of achieving one's goals. It's what an athlete does when he comes on to the field to kick a winning field goal.