10 Steps That’ll Turn You Into A Sales Machine

• Over 30 years of sales experience with Fortune 500 companies.
• A 10-step plan to improve your sales skills.
• The importance of authenticity and long-term relationships in sales.
• Strategies for finding your own selling style.
• Focus on selling outcomes rather than just products.

I have been in sales for over 30 years and I've sold something to every Fortune 500 company at least once. Most of those sales have been in the tens of millions. And I have formulated a 10 step plan to make any sale happen. This process will help you learn to sell. And if you like it or not, you are a salesperson.

People will judge you; they will make decisions about you as a personal brand and your product without you even realizing it. So if you can't sit and listen for five minutes, all this knowledge I'm going to give you for free, I'm afraid you're not gonna make it.

So, there's probably 10 steps to sales. Both how to actually think like a salesperson, get sales done, closed and then ongoing sales, repeat sales, referral sales. I'm going to teach you it all. It's about 10 steps, but they blur into each other. And the end part of this video is just as important.

The points at the end of this video, if you don't know them, you can't apply the bits I'm gonna teach you at the beginning. To learn sales, you also have to learn patience, perseverance, and focus.

The first thing I wanna teach you about sales is that some people like to call it marketing. It makes them feel better. In the end, it's all sales. Everything is about sales. You can call it marketing if it makes you feel that you're cooler. It doesn't really make any difference. It's about getting people on your side. It's about connecting, converting and realizing that at the end of the day, no business can survive. Zero businesses would succeed if you didn't sell something to someone.

Now I'm going to teach you a certain type of sales. I prefer ethical sales. An example of non-ethical sales, in my opinion, and this might seem extreme, but I don't want you to fall into this trap is what I call the 99p rule. People try to trick others. They try to say it's 299 or 499 or 1.499 million instead of 1.5 because basically they want to trick you.

They want to make you think that somehow it's cheaper. Of course, on property pricing, sometimes they do it to fall within a certain category but they don't really want to sell it at that. I think in sales, the thing that's not said enough is be fucking honest, be authentic.

I never see anyone in all these sales courses telling you to do that. They talk about NLP where you can trick people or use words to manipulate them. I even saw a recent video where someone was talking about how they pretended they didn't have the product anymore so that the customer would then buy. This is all bullshit. It's a way of tricking people into getting a quick sale, which is quick money. The quicker you go up, the quicker you come down. Don't listen to this bullshit.

The best salespeople in the world know that the best way to sell is authentic. Make a connection with someone and that person will be with you forever. I sold my very first thing at 15 years old with no sales experience. I was honest. I said to someone, I need money, I want to do your garden, please pay me. They saw the authenticity. I had no brochure, no website, no sales training. And they said yes.

Today, this word authenticity is not used enough in sales. You might even reject it initially, but write it down. It's key to sales. If you're authentic, you don't just sell once to someone, you sell again and again and again.

I recently took my wife to the mini garage to buy her a car. And when we looked through all the different options, the salesperson knew that none of these options suited my wife. The best thing she did was say, you probably should buy a Tesla. It may sound crazy—someone in a mini garage working for BMW telling us to buy someone else's car. But you know what it did? It made us connect to that salesperson.

It made us leave our contact information with that salesperson. And when that salesperson contacts us, she understood our needs, and we probably buy something off her. She didn't try to sell us something we didn't need. I've done exactly the same in the past.

I worked part-time at a clothing shop when I was young. Someone put on a suit. I know that the shop wanted to sell it, but I told the person it didn't look good on them. And from that moment onwards, they trusted me. I only worked there for the summer, but they trusted me forever.

I know this authenticity thing is real. I don't know how to convince you other than to tell you it's made me rich from being poor. And I know you're gonna watch a million other videos, often ones that charge you, telling you this is how you trick people into selling. Don't apply this in your life, and you'll have a better long-term relationship with everybody you sell to.

I sold coaster ads, an advertising product, to someone 20 years ago now, maybe a little over. They bought it. They then worked with my agency, they invested in my businesses, and partnered with me for two decades—because I sold them something that I authentically believed would help their business. And it did. I delivered. I over-delivered.

And that's the second step in sales. Whatever you sell, you want to be able to over-deliver, right? And how do you over-deliver in sales? You make sure that what you're selling, you believe in. You make sure you don't say something that isn't true about the product, even if someone tells you to do it. If you're working somewhere and they tell you to sell something that isn't true, it's your personal brand on the line. Don't do it; walk out that door. Only sell what you can deliver on.

And I know quite often in the sales process, in the excitement of selling, you want to promise much more than you can guarantee. Well then, break it into those two parts. Say, this is what I can guarantee and this is what I hope might happen.

An example I've had many times is PR companies that sell—they come to me and say, Simon, we will get you in every major newspaper in the world. Then, they want me to pay a monthly fee and they make that promise. But the ones I've worked with have come and said, this is our plan to try and get you coverage in every newspaper in the world for what you're trying to do.

Some is what we'll try to do. We guarantee to write up a good press release. We guarantee to take good pictures. We guarantee we've got a good mailing list of people that should write about you, but we cannot guarantee they're going to write about you. And those are the people I want to work with forever.

These are the sorts of people you want to work with. These are the sorts of people you want to be authentic to. Don't over promise.

The third thing in sales you always need to do is find your own style. Now, I have seen introverts do amazing things in sales. A lot of people think only extroverts can sell—those that like people. It's not true.

In Fluid, my agency business that I sold to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the best salesperson in that company was my accountant. Why? Well, I trained her properly. She would go and have lunch with other CFOs, other accountants. They'd ask her what she's doing, and she'd tell them how the business she was working at Fluid was turning companies around, was saving businesses, was changing the world.

She said it because she loved the company and she believed in it. And you know what happened? Those CFOs would go back to the boardroom and tell their CEO. Next thing you know, we get a phone call and email asking for a meeting to work with them. She was the best salesperson. I was labeled as the salesperson in Fluid, but she was the best salesperson.

The point I'm trying to make here is find your style, find how you like to sell. It doesn't matter what I tell you to do. It matters what you can naturally do. So, for example, if you like to write blogs—go on LinkedIn and write blogs about your specialty, about what you find interesting.

Go out there and apply yourself in a way that is comfortable for you. There's a famous quote around marketing and sales, which is, 50% of what I spend on marketing gets lost, gets wasted. The truth is, most of the time when we're selling, the best salespeople don't even know they're selling. You're just sharing knowledge, sharing information, being proud about your product or service, and that in itself causes a sale.

You've got to find your style; lean into that groove, whatever it is. If you're an introvert, then lean into that. If you're an extrovert, lean into that.

I'm gonna get into specifics of types of selling in a minute and break down the different types of selling. But I just want to initially set you up with the right mindset—authenticity, don't oversell, always over-deliver, and find your style.

I’m gonna get into the specifics of the different types of sales that you can do to get the business. You need to sell yourself, to sell your business, to get the clients, and to get clients to promote you.

The fourth thing is to train the team in sales. A lot of the time, the best people to sell you are the people you work with. That can be your clients, your colleagues, that can be your mum. It doesn't really matter.

You want everybody involved in your life to be selling what you're selling, and that means they are trained. Now, it might sound weird if I tell you to go train your mum to sell your product and your mind might initially reject it, but if you explain the product to her in a way that excites her, it means that it supports you. She will be your best salesperson. Now, I don't want to miss out the dads. Don't forget to also train them up.

Everybody should be your salesperson, but it's up to you to train your team.

Now, number five, I want you to know the rules of selling. They are teachable. I don't know why they don't teach you this at school. I think I know why—they don't want you to be free. But I know for a fact that there are three steps to getting any sale.

Any sale—I don't care who you are or what your skill set is. If you follow these three steps, you will get any sale. Most people start with the last step first. Most people start with, this is my product and this is how much it is. It's a mistake.

That's not how you sell. The first step is very simple: identify who could buy your product. You've got to actually know the person who's going to buy it, understand if they really need it. So, for example, you may have seen the thing, sell me this pen, in the movie Wolf of Wall Street, right?

Most people, when I give you this pen, will start selling it. The first question you need to ask is not, would you like to buy this pen?. Forget all that. First thing you need to say is, Do you need a pen?

If people say no, then you ask them when in the future they might need a pen. You break down when the desire and need for this product might occur.

If you’re not sure, and I ran a service business for 15 years, you don't know when people actually need my business services. So what did I do?

Every single month for nine years, I contacted brands like Apple somehow with something to help them remember me. You have to be there when the sale is needed. If you sell someone a pen and they don't need a pen, you’re going to waste your time, you’re going to frustrate them, and you’re going to feel there's no market fit for your product.

Identify the client—do they actually need your product? If they need your product, then you can move on to the second stage. The second stage takes a bit of work which people often don't want to do, and then they wonder why they get less reaction on sales.

The second step is understand the person you're selling to; make a relationship. In an ideal situation, you like them, and they like you. You want to like them because if you sell something to someone and you don't like them, or they don't like you, you're going to have a nightmare.

Even if there is a product market fit and they need a pen, you don't want to be caught in a situation where they've bought something from you and you don't like them and they don't like you. The irony—or the other spin on this—is if you've got these first two steps right, you will need each other.

Know they need the product; they need you. Second, you like each other. People selling and buying need and like each other.

If those first two are in place, the third stage is—here's my product: this is what it does, this is the service it offers. I guarantee you that third step will be completed if you get the first two right.

I've even had cases where clients have said to me, this is the amount of budget I've got, this is what I'm willing to do, Simon. They tell me how to write the contract to get the third bit right.

Sometimes more than I thought I was going to charge or needed at the time to support me, because they like me, and they need our service. When you identify these things, sales gets a lot easier.

Now, there's another very important part of sales, but I wanted first of all, before I move on to the next bit, to make sure you understand—Sales is a system.

The three steps to sales, as I've just told you, you need products like Pipedrive, you need tools that allow you to track the sales. For example, when I was selling for nine years to the client I wanted to win, I had to track every month what I had done.

If someone else came in and took over the sales process for a little while, I had a system in place. Like I mentioned earlier, I would send them a Christmas present, a newsletter, a happy birthday note, or some industry news that I just noticed might help their business do better.

I didn't always sell them, but I always connected to them. And you need a system, things like Pipedrive, to do that. You need products that help you remember who you're contacting and remember the process of always connecting.

Next up, number six on the list: leverage in sales. You need leverage. Sales is basically where you are a new company, a new brand, no one knows you yet. If I contact a company—and I had this experience when, when I started Fluid—I would ring up a company and say, hi, my name's Simon from Fluid. I'd like to help you with your marketing.

And they would say, we're too busy, go away or hang up. You're all going to have this experience, right? Rejection is something you need to get used to in sales.

But the thing with leverage is, if you can get one brand name or one client on board, maybe initially you have to do it free, in some cases you can leverage that brand to help your own brand lift up.

For example, my company managed to get CNN as a client. This was back when CNN was a good brand. We managed to get them on board as a client, and we did a great job for them.

What we then did was ring up and say, "Hi, I'm Simon Squib, I'm working with CNN on a project. I wondered if I could come and talk to you about your company and what we could do to help you."

Suddenly, and this is 10 years ago, CNN was a more respected brand, but then that name allowed us to get in the door with other people. It's delicate, because I don't want you to lie, but I want you to see how you have to leverage what you’ve done and what you've got.

To get CNN as a client, we had to do a free piece of work for them. So, sometimes that's an investment in leverage. You need to make an investment in leverage.

Now, of course, you also have to do a good job for that client because if they then say, I know CNN, or I know John at CNN, and they check—reputation matters. So make sure you've got your reputation lined up; do a good job for people.

But I think leveraging is perfectly fine and normal. It's a good way of helping people who hear your first sentence connect to who you are. If you're working for a big brand, they think, right, you must be a good company. So use leverage in sales.

Number seven on the list is: don't sell a product. Sell the outcome of the product. Too many people, when they go to sell something, tell you exactly what product they've got instead of focusing on the outcome that product can bring you if you use it.

For example, the terminology I've used before on this is sell the sizzle, not the steak. You don't sell the actual steak. There are millions of steaks out there. Sell the feeling of the steak.

If you look at adverts like Häagen-Dazs, they're not telling you about the ingredients. If they did, you probably wouldn't eat it. What they're actually trying to do is create a feeling when you eat the ice cream—love and romance, you're with someone beautiful. They're creating a feeling.

Apple is the same. What Intel processor is in an Apple? Can you tell me? No one cares, right? Because they're selling a feeling.

You've got to learn to sell a feeling. Now, I'm gonna come on to another point in a minute, which is around storytelling. But I want you to understand that any product, anything you sell, is about the feeling.

So when I was selling Fluid, I wasn't selling that we were the best marketing company in the world. I was selling the fact that we cared about having a result for our clients. We prided ourselves on the success of our clients.

I didn't break down that we did email marketing and SEO and built websites and competitions and campaigns and adverts and billboards. No one gives a shit about that stuff. And that's what everyone else was doing, which is why we beat them—because we were selling an outcome. We were selling the sizzle, not the steak.

LinkedIn is another example. They don't really tell you, there's a like button and there's a comment button. You can actually DM people inside. None of that matters. That's just part of what the product does. It's what the product gives you that people care about.

So learn to sell the sizzle. What is the sizzle for your product? Tell me in the comments. I want to know what the sizzle is. I don't care about the steak.

Number eight: this might seem obvious; I'm surprised how many people don't do it. Only sell what you believe in. It's easier to sell something you genuinely believe in. Too many people are selling things they don't believe in, and they are therefore not good salespeople.

Or you can be a good salesperson selling something you don't believe in. You will get sales, especially if you follow my rules. But at the end of the day, sell something you believe in. It's so obvious, isn't it?

Sell something, I think, that has an outcome that makes the world a better place or helps the person you’re aiding have a better life. Sell something you believe in.

I feel with all my heart that so many people don't actually realize this. I have to say it. It feels common sense and obvious, but you will find that anyone can sell something they believe in. That's the irony. So many people don't sell what they believe in.

So only work with companies that make you believe that. If you're going to work with someone, make sure you ask for equity. But that aside, if you're going to sell something, sell something you believe can actually make a difference in people's lives.

Number nine. Now, this type of sales I want to explain can sound a bit like point six around leverage, but actually it's quite different.

Some of the best ways to sell are other people selling for you. Now, I mentioned this earlier about team training as well, but these two ideas blend into point nine, which is the best way—maybe to give you an example, is a brand I don't really like, but they do this quite well.

McDonald's sponsors the Olympics, right? They leverage the Olympics as a brand. The kind of aspirational excitement—community, team—everything the Olympics does so well. McDonald's leverage it, they sponsor it.

Brand leverage and team sales alongside this brand partnership model can be a great way to sell your product. If you want to sell something, you can look to align yourself with that brand.

Just before I did this video, I came off a call with Liquide, this new water brand. I don't know yet if we're going to do a partnership or not, but we can leverage each other's brands. They have a message they want to get out there in the world, and we have a message that we want to get out there in the world.

Putting our two brands together can be hugely powerful. I don't know if that's gonna happen by the time this video goes out, but I’m trying to teach you something.

Brand partnerships, brand alignment is so, so powerful in sales. If I say I'm sponsoring the Olympics or I'm sponsoring the tennis, maybe that sounds like too much money, but you just—even if it's your local football club—if you go and support your local football club, go fix all their billboards, and maybe they’ll give you the billboard for free.

You align yourself by supporting your local football team. You align yourself to your values and their values. You lift each other up through these partnerships. I call this one plus one equals eleven. It's an underutilized way of selling.

Just like asking your customers or your team to sell you, or using the leveraging system I mentioned earlier, one plus one equals eleven can be a very powerful way to get your brand out there. It doesn't always require money, and like the Liquide partnership we have, neither of us will probably pay money. We'll just put our resources together to create something fun—hopefully to help you have a better business life.

But I'm trying to explain a very important fundamental of sales that I've learned: one plus one equals eleven.

Number 10. I’m going to call this the emotional sale. I mentioned earlier the three-step process to getting any sale done. That's absolutely true. There is a very delicate and powerful way to sell that I find hard to explain, but it basically is best explained by understanding that people are people.

An example is recently I launched my book What’s Your Dream on Amazon. It's pre-sale. We went to number one on Amazon the day we launched—number one. And no one's even read the book. No one's even reviewed the book.

Most books need lots of reviews before they'll get purchased, just like products. We have zero views on that book. Zero. And it's number one on Amazon. Why? Because I used a method that I think you can only use if you genuinely feel it.

And that is the emotional sale. So instead of saying, my book will teach you X, my book is amazing, which I think it is, by the way, please buy it. I said instead, this book is about a movement.

It's not give and take; it's about a movement that's going to help us survive in the future. It's give without take. We have to get back to how we just help each other because we can.

If you buy this book, you're not getting all my knowledge for free. If you're buying this book to get all my knowledge for free, don't buy it. My knowledge is free on this YouTube channel.

You can subscribe to this channel right now and get all my knowledge for free. It will cost you nothing. Do not buy the book to get my knowledge for free. Buy the book to support the mission.

I want more people to know that if they give without take, they'll get far richer than if they give and take. You can only get so much when you give and take.

It's a transaction every time that requires you selling time most of the time. Whereas you give without take, there's unlimited upside to what the universe will give you. I've run this experiment for the last five years.

I know it to be true. Go buy my book. Support give out, take if you believe in what I'm saying. That’s what I said. Thousands of people bought the book because it's not about buying the book; it's about supporting an emotional sale.

I think Elon Musk does an emotional sale nearly in all his businesses. He's like, buy Tesla because we've got to do something to save the planet. Buy Tesla because I’m more valuable than those other car companies.

This has to be really authentic. Like the emotional sale is one of the hardest sales because it has to really be true otherwise people see right through it, and then you're fucked. You destroy your personal brand; you destroy your business. Long term, no one comes back. It has to be true.

But if you do it right, it's hugely powerful. I've seen a brilliant clip—Don Draper sells the Kodak Carousel. He does a slideshow explaining why people should use his company to buy the product.

At the end of this video, when you watch it, you'll see what I mean—I cried. You'll cry. The emotional sale is also about showing yourself, showing up, showing why you're doing stuff, really being vulnerable, being open, feeling the pain.

Showing people that you're real, honest, and why you're doing something is bigger than yourself. If you can do this emotional sale, I think it's one of the most powerful.

I think my book getting to number one on Amazon without any reviews during pre-sale is unheard of because of this technique. I say technique loosely and carefully; it's not a trick. It has to be real.

It can't be a trick. That's the thing about sales that people don't seem to explain properly. Sales is not about tricking people. Sales is about telling people the truth, the story, and why it matters to them. They’ll buy it if it matters to them.

So that's the 10 points to sales. I’m going to tell you a few more things now—aren't exactly points, but are very important.

Please, please, please learn what sales is really about. It's about being authentic. It's about having a team around you, it's about community, it’s about having purpose. Being authentic—all of these things need to happen in sales.

But there are a couple of really interesting things. Sometimes you need to stand out in sales, so you need to leverage tools like PR and marketing and other brands.

An example, I recently heard a story by Rory Sutherland, and it's about how they were asked by a dishwasher company how they could sell more dishwashers. One of the things that came up was, why doesn't everyone have two dishwashers?

When I first tell you that you should have two dishwashers, you probably think I'm mad. I've seen this play out so many times in sales processes I've been involved in: out of the box thinking helps brands love you more.

Try things. I bought a staircase in Twickenham, five stories high, encased in glass; it was great PR and I built that platform. Now, to help the community, you can go to the bottom of that staircase, press the doorbell, pitch your drink to that doorbell—upload it to 4.5 million people for free.

Now, those sorts of things. What Rory said was really interesting; when the dishwasher company came to them, they talked about how, why don't we ask everybody to buy two dishwashers?

And of course, the company was initially like, Why would people buy two dishwashers? Well, it turns out if you have two dishwashers, you can use one and then, when it's finished, you can take the stuff out of the dishwasher and put that stuff right back into the second dishwasher.

In other words, you never have to put the plates and dishes and cups in cupboards. Something I personally have to do. I’m rich, and I only have one dishwasher. How stupid am I?

But they didn't go with a campaign in the end to promote the concept of buying two dishwashers. Perhaps that's ludicrous, but I really like this out-of-the-box thinking, the wild ideas, the madness. Own two dishwashers.

You've got to build madness into sales, both from a PR point of view, from a marketing point of view, and to get deals and connect with clients. Be mad. Enjoy the process of selling.

Have fun. Laugh, humor—all of these things will help you fucking sell. So go and have a laugh. Subscribe to this channel—you'll see more people's dreams coming true because of sales than any other reason.

I'm going to have some chicken now. Bye.