Selling Rules! 52 Ways You Can Achieve Sales Success

By Murray Raphel, published by Raphel Marketing,
ISBN 0-9624808-4-3

Book Review Article by Bill Foster

With the plethora of books on selling, why should a person read another one? Or, as a friend of mine has remarked, all the books on selling seem to be saying the same thing, only sometimes in different words.

SELLING RULES is one of those books, but with one basic difference, and that is because it is a book designed on a very practical basis to be used daily, weekly and monthly. Why are there 52 ways to achieve sales success? Each chapter contains a tool to be used in selling for one week, which will help the salesperson incorporate that specific technique into his/her selling techniques and behavior. Thus the book is a manual to be used effectively for an entire year.

One of the chapters is titled, “Visualize Your Goal.” A successful salesperson acts with considerable self-confidence and is a strong believer in imaging. This means that the salesperson visualizes him/herself completing and making the sale. The example the author Raphel uses is from an English comedy, “A Pair of Spectacles,” from the late 19th century. The story is about a kind and gentle man who suddenly finds himself in all kinds of trouble. This is because when he left home one morning, he picked up the wrong pair of glasses. From that moment on, he became a mean and distrustful man. The point here is that one must look at life through the right pair of glasses to understand, visualize and achieve one’s goal. The author quotes the psychologist, Walter Dill Scott, saying “Success or failure in selling is caused more by mental attitude than by mental capacities.” Thus the successful salesperson always sees him/herself throwing the pass for the touchdown, breaking the track record and always making the sale.

In another chapter entitled “Keep It Simple,” Raphel uses examples from an Elmer Wheeler lexicon of simple words and phrases that he developed for businesses nationwide. Wheeler was chosen as “America’s Number One Public Speaker.” He spoke to more than one million people in his lifetime. The Petroleum Institute asked Wheeler to come up with a phrase that would have people buy more gas. Thus when some one pulled up to a station for gas, the attendants were instructed to simply ask the question, “Fill ‘er up?”

One of the more interesting chapters, for this writer, is the one entitled “Be Odd.” Odd prices mean “bargain” to the customer, thus if a product sells for $29.99 it “sounds” less expensive than $30.00. Reducing the price of an item by as little as 1 cent gives the impression to people at that the item is on sale, thus odd prices have a positive effect. Several studies have found that the number “9” is used, on average, more than 30 percent of the time as the final number in pricing items.

"Do What Winners Do,” is a chapter in which Raphel describes the ten characteristics that the writer Edwin Hoyt details in his best selling book, “America’s Super Salesmen.” Included in these ten are work hard, be self-confident, have self-discipline, be flexible and persevere, learn from others and be a perfectionist. All of these are good and appropriate things to do and skills to have, but there may be one difficulty, and that is where and how does one learn to have the motivation to grow and learn the skills and techniques necessary to become a master salesperson?

SELLING RULES is a good manual and can be used by any sales or businessperson to assist them in becoming a better and more successful salesperson. The one caveat is that the person has to develop his/her own motivation. This book cannot do that. Not withstanding this, SELLING RULES! can and should be used effectively by any salesperson.

Bill Foster, President of Foster Coaching/Consulting Group coaches individuals, executives, and businesses to identify and create their niche—their specialness—and then to identify, set and achieve their goals. His e-mail is BillFoster@nichecoach.com. and website is www.nichecoach.com.