Dr Moine Association for Human Achievement, Inc.
While people enter the sales profession for many different reasons, chief among those is the desire to earn a very good income. One of the facts I have learned from 30 years of working as a Sales Psychologist and performance coach is that if you don’t have a strong desire to make a lot of money, you will probably never become a sales superstar.
People who have read my books or attended my seminars know that I have worked with many sales superstars across the United States, in the Far East, Australia and Europe.
One of the questions I am most frequently asked by salespeople is, “How can I double, triple or quadruple my income?”
From working with many sales superstars in a wide variety of industries and professions, I’ve helped good salespeople accomplish this and much more. In this article, I’ll give you a basic grounding. In future articles, we will go into much more detail on how you can accomplish this.
I assume that you are willing to work fairly hard as a salesperson. As long as you are working hard, why not make as much money as you can for your efforts?
Becoming a Sales Millionaire.
The first step to becoming a sales millionaire is to know and BELIEVE it is possible. If you think, “I’ll never become a sales millionaire,” then you never will. Your thinking will become a self-fulfilling negative prophesy.
Yes, it is possible to become a millionaire or a multi-millionaire as a salesperson. I’ve worked with some salespeople who regularly make more than $1 million a year from sales and at least three of my clients have made more than $10 million in one year from sales.
That’s not how much they sold. That is their income.
If you select the right specialization in sales and if you master the profession of sales, you can make more than $1 million a year in personal income. Obviously, if you are a sales clerk in a department store down at the local mall, you will never become a sales millionaire no matter how many hours you work.
Breaking the $100K Barrier.
There are only a few sales areas in which you can make several hundred thousand dollars a year or more. Some of them, like private jet sales, only have a need for a small number of salespeople. I won’t cover those sales specializations which only have room for a few players.
Instead we will look at some broader professional specializations that many of you could enter if you had a certain amount of training, the right mindset, willingness to work hard and a strong desire to succeed.
In the requirements listed above, you’ll notice that I did NOT mention a lot of education. Very few of the sales superstars I have worked with are highly educated. They are very bright people but don’t necessarily possess a lot of formal education.
In many cases, a basic college degree (which could be in almost any subject) is all that is necessary to get hired as a salesperson by most companies. And I have worked with a large number of salespeople who earn several hundred thousand dollars per year or more who do not have any college degree.
Before we get into the big dollar arena of salesmanship, let’s look at how you can make a good if not spectacular income of $100,000 a year or more from sales.
You can make more than $100,000 a year in many different sales specializations. I’ve actually coached salespeople selling such common everyday items as photocopiers and janitorial supplies who made more than $100K per year in personal income. In both cases, they sold large quantities of those items to corporate clients. Another one of my clients made more than $100K a year selling cardboard boxes to businesses. It wasn’t particularly glamorous, but he made more money each year than the average attorney makes.
I’ve learned that you can make $100K a year in a huge variety of different sales specialization if you have mastered the skills of modern salesmanship and if you are willing to work reasonably hard.
How to Earn $500K or More Per Year in Sales.
Now let’s take a closer look at the big leagues of selling. One of the greatest sales specializations in America is selling financial products and services. Many of the salespeople I have worked with who regularly make $1 million a year or more are in this specialization which includes financial planning, selling mutual funds, stocks, bonds, exchange traded funds (ETFs), insurance, annuities, mortgages and/or many other products and services.
An amazing fact is that when a number of these people entered the financial services field, they knew relatively little about the products and services they would soon be selling. They were not financial geniuses. Some of them were almost broke or were heavily in debt.
So don’t think you can’t enter the financial services field unless you are an investment genius or a financial planning expert. But you must have a strong desire to learn. With as little as one or two weeks of training, you can pass some of the tests required to get a license to sell particular financial products or services. Then you embark upon a lifetime of learning as you work selling financial products and services and advising clients.
The amount of money you can make in some financial services specializations is truly staggering. One of my clients is an ex-lawyer who became an annuity sales specialist. In one day, he closed sales that earned him more than $600,000 in commissions! Of course, he had been working on those sales for several weeks, but the fact is he closed them all on one day and made $600K that day.
Another one of my clients who is one of the top annuity sales specialists in America has made more than $10 million in commissions in each of the past two years.
You don’t necessarily have to sell products to make an extraordinarily high income in the financial services field. I’ve worked with financial planners who sell no products and earn no commissions but instead earn a fee on the assets they manage. Some of them regularly make several million dollars a year in personal income from these fees.
Another fascinating fact about selling financial products and services is that many of the people in this specialization don’t see themselves as “salespeople” but as financial planning professionals or wealth advisors. Yet ALL of the multi-millionaire financial advisors I have worked with recognize the absolutely crucial importance of sales and marketing to their success.
Other Sales Professions that Can Create Millionaires.
The financial services fields employ several hundred thousand people. Another large sales specialization that offers the potential of a very high income is that of real estate sales.
Several hundred thousand people also work in real estate sales but many of them are part-timers who do not put in 40 hours a week. If you simply work full-time in real estate sales and put in a good effort, you already have a big advantage over many of the other salespeople in this field.
While you don’t have to sell luxury homes to make a very large income in real estate sales, it does help. The other alternative is to sell a very large number of lower-priced homes. Most of the real estate sales superstars I have known and worked with either sell higher end homes or sell office buildings or industrial buildings. Some who make several hundred thousand dollars to over $1 million a year actually specialize in long-term real estate leases.
To show you what the potential is in higher-end real estate sales, I’ve known real estate salespeople who have earned more than $500,000 and in a few cases, more than $1 million, from selling just one piece of property. Much more common is the $100,000 plus commission—which still makes for a very nice payday.
The Skills, Mindset and Attitude Needed to Become a Sales Millionaire.
In future articles, I will be going into much more detail on the skills, mindset and attitude needed to become a sales millionaire.
If you are truly serious about doubling, tripling or quadrupling your income in sales or in becoming a sales millionaire, you must first of all know that it is possible and believe deeply that it is possible for you. Without that core belief, a high level of sales success will never become a reality for you.
You must then be in a sales specialization where it is possible for a regular person to earn very high levels of income. As covered in this article, financial services sales and real estate sales are two of the largest such specializations. There are more and I also be covering some of those other sales specializations in future articles.
Think of who you COULD be. Your life does not always have to be the way it is today. Making the kind of money you deserve to make could require you to change sales specializations. That can be both scary and very exciting. In future articles I will show you how to successfully deal with that fear, overcome it and become the self-confident high-income sales professional you are capable of becoming.
Whatever your sales specialization, I wish you great success this year and for all the years into the future.
Dr. Moine is the author of 10 books and has coached sales champions all across America, Canada, Europe, the Far East and Australia. Dr. Moine wrote the first book on NLP and master salesmanship and has been hired as a consultant and sales trainer by major companies such as AT&T, General Motors, Toshiba, Zurich Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Paine Webber, Hughes Aircraft and many more. He presently specializes in coaching sales superstars and future sales superstars. His website is www.DrMoine.com.