Didn't I? And did I get you?

More important, do you get the point?

How could anyone not want to keep reading when they come to a chapter with the unlikely title "Tony's Totally Stupid, Idiotic, Useless Sales Secrets"? Even though it's a seemingly negative statement, it has mighty grabbing power and is loaded with the trade secrets I've been telling you about, such as:

So don't pee in your pants. The motivational advice in this chapter is as good as in any other part of the book, and maybe better. Just bear in mind that you can get people to notice you in a whoooooole lot of different ways when you're trying to get your product sold. I know I'm repeating myself, but didn't I tell you? Repetition, repetition, repetition.

Once in his producing days in Hollywood the notorious Howard Hughes was making an epic movie filled with tons of costumes, sets, and history book characters. During the shooting, an assistant came up to him and questioned an historical fact in one of the scenes. The assistant suggested that they send a staff member to the library immediately to find out if the detail was accurate. Hughes bellowed at him, "Never check an interesting fact."

In sales, like I told you, I try to think a little like a military guy. It's no coincidence that Sun Tzu's 2000-year-old The Art of War is used by serious business individuals around the world. "If you know the enemy and know yourself," the Chinese sage wrote, "you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

Your customers aren't your enemy, obviously. But they are the target of your advance strategy, and in this sense should be understood as well as possible. Unlike Howard Hughes, you do have to check your facts.

For example, I keep a steady eye on demographics. What population segments are buying my goods on TV? What's their gender? Their average age? Their income and education level? What cultural backgrounds do they represent?

What about surveys? Exploratory customer research? Market studies? They can all help.

And simple word of mouth. Guerrilla marketing. Keep your ear to the ground. Ask questions. Talk to potential buyers. Listen to their stories. What are your customers clamoring for these days? What are their gripes? What new products are flying off the shelves? What are the latest hot buttons you can push to increase sales? You'll learn a lot about your customers by tuning in to the local buzz.

Research your competition. Visit their stores. Read their literature. Study their web sites. Talk to their staffs. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What do they do better than you do? Where do you need to improve things to compete?

Study your competition, then make your commercial offering a little better than theirs. Improve one widget, list one extra benefit, beef up your guarantee, then tell people all about it. When I was selling my Micropedic pillow on the Home Shopping Network, I decided to add two extra benefits to my pitch. These were: (1) The pillow doesn't flatten out on the bed. (2) The pillow stops you from sweating.

The next time out on TV, sales of the Micropedic pillow increased by 10 percent. That's a lot. And all I did was make a slight improvement to an already successful sales pitch. Sometimes that's all you need to make your sales take off.

The raw marketing fact of life is that whatever goods or services customers want today, they probably won't want tomorrow. Markets for just about everything, especially luxury and discretionary items, are volatile. One size never fits all in selling.

Every day from 1945 to 1957 the television curtain went up for Queen for a Day.

On this mother of all TV reality shows, the host, Jack Bailey, would interview four middle-aged female contestants who competed with each other for the most tragic, tear-jerking life story. Poverty, widowhood, sickness, disabled children, fire, flood, even the hint of rape were typical scenarios.

At the end of each show the audience then chose the most outstanding sob story by ringing the "applause meter." The winner was crowned and awarded a range of goodies like a night on the town, a cosmetic makeover, or more darkly, a nurse to take care of her kids while the "Queen" went to the hospital for an operation.

I only saw later redos of this show, but the idea always seemed a sound one to me from a selling perspective: Make your customer king or queen for a day.

Whenever I want to sell anything to anyone, I focus completely on the buyer's needs.

What do they want most? To get a great product, of course. But on a motivational level they also yearn:

When I take call-ins on TV or write-ins on my column and web site, I try to respond to these needs. For example, here's a write-in I recently received:

Here's my answer. I address this woman's needs. I also talk to her heart, and try to make her feel special. Because she is:

If you change your customer's mindset, you change his or her life as well. Always listen to a customer's story and read between the lines. Between the lines is the place you'll find where the customer really lives, and what he or she wants and needs.

You wouldn't believe the hostile things people say to me on my web site or on call-in shows. They accuse me of being a phony. They tell me I'm a girl dressed up as a boy. They tell me I'm a big-mouthed slob, or that they want to beat me up. One guy challenged me to a knife fight.

There are some nut-job dudes out there, I gotta tell you!

But when people confront me with anger and hostility, I have my own way of responding that defuses their negativity.

For one, if callers are angry but nonetheless sound sane, I'll listen carefully to what they have to say. If it makes sense, I'll thank them. Then on to the next caller. If the criticism is useful, I may then incorporate it into my business or my living agenda. If not, remember the famous Italian saying: forgeeeeeeeet about it.

Say an angry lady phones me while I'm on a live call-in show. The first thing I do is ask her name. Right away this knowledge arms me with a valuable tool. A person's name is their most prized possession.

As a rule, you can tell in five or ten seconds if callers are going to go hyper-hostile on you. When I see it coming, before callers have time to work themselves into a super lather, I stop them cold by calling out their name."Mary Ann, Mary Ann—I have something really important to tell you!"

This method works really well. Almost everybody ceases work when they hear their name called out. Once I slow them down this way and grab their attention, I then try to win their friendship.

"Mary Ann, do you know that you motivate America! You make the products I sell great! 'Cause you call in like this! You care! You want to talk about it, to know more about it! To give your opinion in this free country of ours!"

Right away I put a positive, feel-good set of ideas into Mary Ann's head. I make her the star.

Or say someone calls in angry that they aren't getting results from an exercise product. I ask if they've called our help line and spoken to their free personal trainer.

They always say no.

"No! Why not?"

"I forgot."

"Then do it right now, Mary Ann. Here's the number. Call after you hang up so our trainer can get a sense of your body type and give you the advice you need. Go on, Mary Ann, do it now! It's free for being my customer!"

Right away I feel her attitude improve. I'm using my positive energy and enthusiasm to change her mindset from negative to positive.

And, you know, when Mary Ann calls in with a complaint, this also means that deep down she's still interested in my product. She hasn't given up on it yet. Usually she just needs to know more about it, and it's my job as salesman to transform her negative question into a positive solution. At the end of these conversations we're usually friends. Mary Ann is now eager to try the item, and to tell her friends and family what a great product the guy on TV with the ponytail is selling.

Turn hostile criticism into constructive advice, complaints into profit, adversity into victory, negatives into a positives.

There's always a way.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos. You are far more likely to part with your money if you gamble in a timeless world. A little thing, but it brings big dividends for the gambling clubs.

Smart politicians rent halls for press conferences that are a little too small to hold all the reporters attending. This way the next day, when reporting on the conference, the press writes, "So-and-so talked before a standing-room-only audience of reporters today."

Napoleon once remarked that he beat the Germans at the battle of Austerlitz because "I knew the value of five minutes." Details.

For many years drivers complained about how difficult it was to keep coffee in the car without spilling it. Where to put the cup? Then General Motors installed cup holders in its new line of vehicles, and sales soared. The power of the small.

When DeWitt Wallace was looking for a location to build the headquarters for his new magazine, Reader's Digest, he chose the town of Chappaqua, New York. He then did something odd. He set up the magazine's post office box in nearby Pleasantville, and used it as the Digest's mailing address. Know why? Because when readers saw the very friendly name "Pleasantville" in the magazine's promotional materials, they were more inclined to subscribe. This is one of the many details that helped Reader's Digest become the most popular magazine in the world.

So dot your i's and cross your t's, folks. When you do little things that nobody else is doing, you do a lot.

When I'm arranging my product shots for TV, it's essential that every piece of merchandise be perfectly positioned, from the product to the instruction brochure. I make sure that the exercise machine is placed at the exact right angle to give viewers maximum visibility. I monitor what my demonstrators wear, how they fix their hair, the colors on the walls on the set. I show the object I'm selling in the round. Front and back. That's important and often neglected.

Show—don't tell, but show—the small but appealing benefits that your product offers.

Do it with demonstrations, photographs, video clips. Show the kitchen appliance mixing dough in a bowl, a pretty woman sleeping peacefully on a pillow, a photo of a house that's for sale. Use strong graphics to pound home your selling points. Show how the product helps in the kitchen, in the shop, at the desk. Tell listeners how easy it is to obtain the product.

Appeal to the senses. Let them touch your product, taste it, pinch it, pick it up. Play stimulating music during presentations. Support your claims with testimonials. Let experts speak approvingly of what you're selling. It all adds up and helps convince.

When I first started making fitness videos, I watched how others did it. One thing that really bothered me was that exercisers in these videos counted their repetitions out loud. I hated that "one, two, three, four" thing of aerobic dance exercises. The counting just irritated me. It was a little thing, but it got on my nerves. Maybe it got on viewers' nerves, too, I thought.

So I invented what I called a "time clock graph," and positioned it onscreen under each exerciser. The graph counted down the number of seconds of workout time that was left in each set for the beginner, the intermediate, and the advanced. Besides being nice to look at, the graph was motivating and helpful. See, Mr. and Ms. Viewer, you have only 15 more seconds left to go! You can do it!

It was a tiny innovation, but it was totally new and it helped sell videos. When you're selling, remember: There's no such thing as a little thing.

It's one of the great phrases ever coined in advertising: "Sell the sizzle, not the steak."

The thing is, though, to my mind when I offer a product, I like to sell both the steak and the sizzle. Know what I mean? Why be exclusionary?

The sizzle is the emotion you embed in your words and pictures, and the corresponding feelings of desire and need they evoke in customers. Remember, people don't buy the product per se. They buy what the product can do for them.

If you're selling sausages, describe the tantalizing aroma they emit when they're cooking on the grill. If you're selling umbrellas, show how they protect you from dangerous cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. If you're selling dog food, show a picture of a doggie wagging his tail and wolfing down a bowl of canned meat that looks so delicious you'd like to try it yourself.

Show people what their lives will be like when they buy your idea, your merchandise, your dream. Show them how much better existence will be when they do what you're telling them to do. The sharper you draw a positive picture of benefits, the more people will respond to your appeals.

I remember years ago driving across the great Mojave Desert. It was a 106-degree day near Needles, California, which is often the hottest city in the United States. My air-conditioning was struggling to keep up and was losing.

As I drove along mile after dehydrating mile, I happened to pass a large hand-printed signboard propped up along the side of the road. It read: "Ice Cold Lemonade ahead at Maude's Market." Beneath the words was a colorful drawing of a glass of lemonade with ice.

A few miles later I passed a similar sign. This one offered, "Ice Cold Watermelon ahead at Maude's Market" with a big red watermelon slice below. A few minutes more and there was another sign: "Home Made Ice Cream ahead at Maude's Market."

By the time I reached Maude's a few miles down the road, believe me, my thirst had become so overwhelming that I pulled over and almost sprinted into the store, buying everything cold in sight. It was more than the heat that had sizzled me.

"One of the most successful salesmen for popcorn machines," writes Maxwell Droke, an early motivational writer, "says that his first step is to 'make the merchant's mouth water for crisp, tender flakes of snow white popcorn, flavored with pure creamery butter.' He makes his prospect hungry for popcorn, then proceeds to convince him that there are plenty of folks who will respond to the same hidden hunger, and trade their nickels for delicious popcorn."

That's the sizzle.

Important? You bet.

These are the famous lines salesman Professor Harold Hill sings in what's been called the "Broadway salesman's musical," The Music Man.

And you do. You gotta know the territory. You gotta know your product and you gotta know your customer. If you're going to give it sizzle, first find where the sizzle lies.

A perfect example of not knowing the territory took place in August 2009 when the chief executive of Whole Foods Market, John P. Mackey, made a speech in which he objected to government involvement in health care.

Mr. Mackey had a perfect right to his opinion, of course. But sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, especially in business. The upscale, liberal, crunchy granola crowd that patronizes Whole Foods was instantly up in arms over this speech. The Internet, Twitter, Facebook, listservs, blogs, and Whole Food's own electronic forum all zinged with messages from offended customers, many of whom were urging buyers to boycott Whole Foods and to shop for their organic goodies elsewhere.

A few days later Mackey publicly explained that he was voicing his own opinion, not that of his company. But by now the damage was done. Complaints flooded Whole Food's communications centers, and they were pressured to spend the next few weeks fielding angry questions and pacifying angry customers. Chief Executive Mackey clearly did not know the territory.

In contrast, a grandmaster of knowing the territory was a gentleman named Ray Kroc. No man ever knew his product or his customer better than Ray Kroc.

A longtime traveling salesman, this remarkable man once worked for room and board at Ray Dambaugh's Restaurant in the Midwest simply to learn everything he could about the restaurant business. During his early years he worked as a paper cup salesman, a jazz musician, and a radio announcer. Finally, he went on the road selling Multi-Mixer milkshake machines to mom-and-pop restaurants across the United States.

In his early 50s, after spending many years learning the selling trade and studying the way local eating establishments delivered food to patrons, Kroc visited a small but highly successful hamburger chain run by two brothers, Mac and Dick MacDonald.

These two self-made marketing whiz kids had developed a highly mechanized and efficient program of food preparation that they dubbed the "Speedee Service System." They were already selling franchises for their MacDonald's restaurants, though on a modest scale.

Immediately realizing the supersized potential in the automated hamburger business, Kroc went to work for the MacDonald brothers as head of franchising. While he worked he also spent time in the company kitchen, studying the patty-making machines, improving them, fixing them. After a few years he grew tired of the MacDonald brothers' reluctance to open more stores, and he bought them out. Once the business was his, he surgically removed the "a" from the "Mac," changing the chain's name to McDonald's.

Ray Kroc then went on to apply Henry Ford's assembly-line techniques to the food business, single-handedly inventing the fast-food industry in the United States, and building the largest restaurant business in the world.

Part of his genius was advertising. No one had ever seen anything like it. He blitzed the airways 24/7, making his hamburgers sound like filet mignon. Yummy patties, choice meat, mouthwatering cheddar, extra lettuce and pickles, all at cheap prices with fast, friendly service, drive-in purchases, no waiting for reservations, and kid friendly—you'd find it all at McDonald's.

It was a new and amazing way to merchandise a product. Kroc understood that the United States was a country of people in a hurry, people who liked to eat out, people who liked a bargain, and people who in the long run preferred plain old juicy American food on their table. He knew that hamburgers could be more than a lump of meat. They could be pure sizzle.

He knew the territory.

"I was 52 years old," Kroc wrote. "I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns. But I was convinced that the best was ahead of me."

In 65 B.C. Marcus Licinius Crassus was a businessman on his way up in the city of Rome.

Noting one day that Rome had no city fire department, Crassus recruited an assortment of ex-soldiers, laborers, and thugs, organized them into crews, equipped them with a fleet of portable water and hose wagons, and told them to show up wherever a fire broke out.

A good idea. Filling a need. Finding a niche. But Crassus went a little further than this.

Once arrived at the scene of the blaze, the foreman of his crew was instructed to find the owner of the burning building and make him an offer he couldn't refuse: Sell the building at 10 percent of its value or the firefighting crew would leave the premises and allow the building to burn to the ground.

Needless to say, most owners chose to salvage at least something out of the disaster, and sold. Crassus soon owned a quarter of the city, and became the richest man in Rome.

Heartless and criminal? It goes without saying. Don't do it in front of the kiddies.

But the idea behind it is a solid principle of business. Find a need and fill a niche.

In today's gloomy economic environment, there's a lot of untapped opportunity out there for profit. When one thing goes down in the business world, another goes up.

Housing prices are in the hole. If you own a house it's a bad time to sell. But if you have some ready investment capital stashed away, it's a great time to buy. Automobiles are expensive, and the recession hasn't helped dealerships drop prices that much. Bad for some, good for others. This may be the perfect time to get into the used car business.

I told you in an earlier chapter how when I decided to sell food on TV the execs at the Home Shopping Network insisted it wasn't a good idea. Viewers buy their food at supermarkets, they said. And anyway, food sales is one of the hardest categories to crack on TV.

I assured them that audiences would buy food on TV as long as I could convince them that my product was unique, that it was healthy in a way the other food products weren't, and that they couldn't find it anywhere else. I then went on the air and started selling bison hot dogs and bison hamburgers like crazy. Listen in:

"Here's why you need it, people. Do you have high cholesterol? This is the meat for you. Bison has 3.5 times less fat than beef. It has less fat than a chicken breast. And it's a hamburger.

"Afraid of getting poisoned by all the hormones and chemicals they put in supermarket meats? My bison are all uninjected and grass fed, unlike most supermarket lamb, pork, and beef.

"Afraid of getting fat? My bison burgers have four times less saturated fat than any other popular meat.

"Coronary problems? No problem. Bison is the only meat recommended by the American Heart Association. If you've got a tricky valve or pesky blood pressure and you like to eat meat, bison is your dish. It's the healthy red meat alternative."

Right down the list: unique benefit after unique benefit. This is the only meat on the market that does all these things for you. You won't find this product on any supermarket shelf. Look better and feel better. Buy it now! In one day on the Home Shopping Network I sold 173,469 hotdogs and 171,827 burgers, cashing out at over $1.4 million for a day's work. Thank God and HSN for giving me a chance.

Create a need and fill it.

There's a story about an enterprising salesman who managed to get his foot in the office of a wealthy physician.

First the salesman tried to sell the doctor his line of shoes. The doctor didn't need shoes. Then hats. The doc had plenty of hats. What about a nice suitcase? Never travel. Binoculars? What the hell for?

Finally, the doctor grew tired of the salesman's persistence and ordered him out of his office. At the door the salesman turned and smiled. "I know exactly what you need, sir," he said.

He reached into his bag and brought out a small brass plate with an inscription on it. It read:

The doctor laughed, admitted that this was an item he really could use, and bought the brass plate immediately.

Find the need and fill it.