How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling book review
But I’m not meeting people in person. So how do I do sales when I’m not meeting people in person?
How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger is a nonfiction book about sales, business, and economics.
So why did I pick this book up? I picked this book up when I started reading Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. I was also reading Napoleon Hill, and I found books like these.
Now, I’m gonna be honest with you. I read these books, and then I have to go to ChatGPT and be like, “Tell me what Frank Bettger would be saying in 2026. Tell me what Napoleon Hill would be saying in 2026.”
Because I get it. Show up to the office with your insurance contract. I already have it filled out for them, so they just have to sign.
But I’m not meeting people in person.
So how do I do sales when I’m not meeting people in person?
I am a charismatic person. I am a good listener, and I enjoy letting people talk about themselves, which means I am pretty good at opening up the conversation. But when you’re virtual, it’s very, very different. So I’m constantly like, bring this up. Bring this to current. Help me. Help me. Help me.
There are a couple of things I learned from the book that were really, really good.
Frank Bettger is in insurance, and one of the really cool lessons is: do not talk yourself out of the sale. Frank talks about how you get into someone’s office, you finally get a chance to see them, they tell you what they want, and you just keep talking and talking and talking.
You have essentially talked yourself out of it.
They have said, “Oh, great. What’s the next step?”
Then you keep selling them on it, and now they’re like, “Well, I’ll let you know,” because you have now confused them.
“State your piece and then listen.”
Yes, you want to open up the conversation. Yes, you want to get the ball rolling. But then you need to just listen. They will literally tell you.
Part two of that is to keep this phrase in mind: “In addition to what?”
So you’re sitting down with someone and they’re like, “Oh, this sounds good. I’ll contact you in three months.”
In addition to what? What else is the problem?
“Well, I don’t really want to pay for it now.”
In addition to what?
“Well, I have all these other expenses and my kid is graduating.”
In addition to what?
Because you eventually want to get them to where they’ve figured out, “I don’t want to do it now just because I don’t want to, and I’ll do it in the future.”
Well, then why don’t we just do it now?
“Oh, okay. We’ll just do it now.”
I thought that was really fascinating.
There were a few things in here that I thought were like that slimy salesperson thing, but Frank has a really good way of explaining that that’s not how you should be. Because salespeople are automatically seen as being that, this is how you don’t do that.
You don’t try to meet someone in the parking lot and go around working with their assistant or their secretary to get on their calendar. It’s just not going to endear you to the office. You do want to be overprepared so that you don’t have to exaggerate and stammer and do all of these other things.
Another thing I thought was really cool was how your dress and your tailored clothes make so much of an impression.
1940s, 1930s? Yes. In order to get in the door, you have to be presentable. And presentable was typically a respectable suit, shoeshine and a great haircut. But he also talks about how he went to get a haircut and was talking to the barber. The guy was like, “Oh, business is so hard. Sometimes people want a haircut, sometimes they don’t.”
Basically, Frank walked out and the barber realized, I need to have standing appointments. Because if your hair is always growing and you feel more confident in your sales when you always have a haircut, I can start having standing appointments.
Then this guy’s business completely flourished.
Made a lot of sense. I thought, how can I implement a lot of that into my own business? There’s a lot of stuff that I’m thinking about as I’m reading the book, and I’m trying to apply it to my own business and to my own decade of being alive.
There was a lot of “take what you need and leave the rest.”
Frank was alive in the early 1900s. He has a lot of things that he says in here that are really old-timey. There aren’t women running businesses. It’s definitely a dated book. It’s not current and not kept up to speed, but a lot of it was still good.
I’m not gonna hold that against him. He was a product of his time.
Every single chapter has something like: this is the point, this is the theme, here are three stories to emphasize it. That part I really liked because while you’re reading the stories, you’re thinking about how this would apply to your own life. It made it really, really practical.
So would I read the book again?
Yes. Absolutely.
You have to read the book as a whole. I think if you just took one isolated chapter out, you’d be like, “How does that apply to anything?” You have to read the book as a whole because that’s how you get the full picture of how Frank Bettger raised himself from failure to success in selling.
If you’re interested in books about sales and business and all of it, this is definitely one to consider.
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Until the next book review,
Kyla
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