Getting Inside The Door
We will assume that you have qualified yourself to succeed; that you have developed your best capabilities in knowledge, in manhood, and in sales skill; that you have completed the general preparation necessary to assure your success in marketing your particular qualifications; and that you also have learned how to find and to make the most of your prospects. After these preliminaries you are ready to take the next step in the selling process, and to begin putting your capabilities, and what you have learned from preparation and prospecting, to specific use in actual selling.
In order to succeed, you must not only be qualified for some particular service work, but you also need chances to demonstrate your capabilities and preparedness for effective service. If you stand all your life in complete readiness for success but outside the door of opportunity, you will be a failure despite your exceptional qualifications and preparations for handling chances to succeed. It is necessary that you get inside the door. We will study now the sure ways and means of entrance.
The Salesman's Advantage Over the Buyer
One great advantage the skillful salesman has over even the best buyer is that he can plan completely what he will do and how he will do it to accomplish his selling purpose. The prospect is unable to anticipate who will call upon him next; so it is impossible for him to avoid being taken unawares by each salesman. He can make only general and hasty preparations at the moment to deal with the particular individual who comes intent on securing his order.
The good salesman, however, works out in advance the most effective ways and means to present his proposition. Each move in the process of selling his ideas to a prospect is carefully studied and practiced beforehand. The effects of different words and tones and acts are exactly weighed. When the thoroughly prepared salesman calls on a possible buyer, he has in mind a flexible program of procedure with which he is perfectly familiar and which he can adapt skillfully to various conditions that his imagination has enabled him to anticipate. Hence the master salesman usually is able to control the situation, no matter how shrewd the prospect may be; because the salesman's chance to plan assures him a great advantage over the unprepared or incompletely prepared other party to the sale.
Dominate The Interview with Confidence
If you would likewise "dominate" the man to whom you want to sell your capabilities, prepare "plans of approach" to his interest before calling on him; in order to make sure of presenting your qualifications most strongly. He can oppose your salesmanship with but comparatively weak resistance; because he has had no such opportunity as you to get all ready for this interview. The skillful salesman is confident that he can control the selling process he begins. When you seek a selected chance for the success you desire, you should feel similar assurance of ability to sell your services. You will possess this feeling if you prepare your "plan of approach" as the master salesman gets ready for his interview with a prospective buyer.
The Two Entrances
You have to make two distinct "entrances" in order to gain your desired chance to succeed. You need to get yourself into the presence of the employer you have selected. Then it is essential that you get the true idea of your capabilities and preparedness into his mind. Your "approach" to his attention and interest, therefore, involves a double process. It is important that you plan intelligently the most skillful ways and means of making the two entrances; through the physical and the mental closed doors that now shut you out from the opportunities you have prospected and desire to gain.