If you can rekindle your customer’s dreams and incorporate your product or service into those dreams, you can be successful anywhere in the most difficult of economic times.

Here are seven of my best tips on how to sell in good times or bad, anywhere, anytime. By following the basics, listening to customers’ needs, taking pride in your product or service and following up on every commitment you make, you’ll always be in a prime position to close the sale.

1. Have Confidence In Your Profession.

When the business climate is down, corporations desperately need professionals — strong salespeople with solid skills — to sell benefits to a skittish market.

Never let the economy become your excuse for failure. The next time someone tells you they can’t afford to buy because of the economy, try this approach. Have them pretend their landlord walked in and said, “For $1,000 today and $3,000 in four weeks, you can stay here rent free for 20 years.” We all know the customer would come up with the money, right? Convince your customer that your product or service will pay his rent for the next 20 years; he will buy every time.

Forget a glib tongue and a good personality and tricky closes, confidence is the number one qualification for a good salesperson.

2. Take Pride In the Product Or Service You Sell And The Company You Represent.

When you are convinced of your product’s value you will be convincing. Once I sold a sign to a lovely lady in Kankakee, Illinois. It was a tough sale. The lady was convinced she could not afford to buy a sign or anything else. When the sign worked and the lady became quite successful, she told me that she had bought my product not because she thought it would work, but because I was so convinced it would work.

The customer will reflect the pride you take in yourself, your company, and your product or service.

3. Master Your Craft.

Do you know your presentation perfectly? Can you deliver it convincingly? The world is a stage and salespeople are the actors. Choreograph your minutely detailed presentation so you can deliver it powerfully and smoothly, and you will always have a high-paying, leading role. Do you study, plan, prepare and work hard enough to propel yourself to the top? If you prepare yourself well enough and work hard enough to do well when the economy is bad, when the economy improves your sales will soar.

4. Learn And Appreciate Your Profession.

Study the history of your profession. Wars have been fought, continents discovered and new frontiers explored because salespeople are the ultimate pioneers. Much of history is the study of someone discovering what to sell to someone else.

I fear we are often like the pig who eats the acorns and never looks up to see what tree they fell from. Study and appreciate every aspect of your profession.

5. Look Out For Your Customer’s Best Interests.

In my opinion, salespeople have been taught many incorrect and counterproductive principles. One of the most harmful, “Sell Yourself Before You Sell Your Product,” has a connotation of accommodation and compromise — changing your own personality and individuality to please your customer in the hope of getting an order. The idea that customers can be manipulated by this superficial exercise is insulting both to you and to your customer. It has been my experience that salespeople who sell themselves wind up with a generic and uninteresting personality that is unlikely to impress or please anyone. High volume salespeople maintain their individuality. They build value and urgency into their product and proposition.

If you think of yourself as a professional who can contribute to your customer’s success, you will be successful. If your ethical standards preclude you from doing anything except what is best for your customer, there will be no limits to your success.

6. Enjoy Yourself.

We are in an exciting, fulfilling, fun business. We can generally travel, help people and make a lot of money, in the wonderful profession of selling. We should also stop to smell the roses and enjoy the adventure. I have traveled all over this and many other countries because of the great opportunities offered by our profession.

I have taught taxi drivers, dishwashers and chronically unemployed people how to sell. Some of these people now earn 10, 20 or 30 thousand dollars a month. What a great business! We can use our creativity, ingenuity and imagination to make a living and help others. What other profession allows you to be so creative? We should savor the adventure.

7. Help People Rekindle and Rediscover Their Dreams.

Often, our customers are beat down and discouraged. They have had to compromise because of the realities of life. Rekindle the dreams that sparked their initial desires. Incorporate your product or service into those dreams. Show them how, with your help, their dreams will come true. I love to paint word pictures until I get my customers visualizing the benefits of my product. Then I have them visualizing all their friends, family, rivals and enemies watching them enjoying those benefits. There is nothing more powerful than tapping into your customer’s ego. A customer will make almost any sacrifice to satisfy it.

One time, I called on a lady in California who owned a lounge with a big “For Sale” sign on it. As she pointed to the sign, she said, “You are some kind of fool trying to sell me a sign. I’m going out of business.”

As I talked to her about how she had built her business, and all the plans she once had, something happened. Suddenly she wanted to complete what she had started. Suddenly she didn’t want to retire. She not only took the business off the market, she bought the sign and remodeled.