Darren R. Cecil grew up hearing the word no.

Born with his left arm missing below the elbow due to a congenital birth defect, Cecil was told he could not play sports.

He played baseball and basketball for Emerson College in Boston while attending the school from 1982 to 1987.

In college, he went blind in his left eye due to a disease of the cornea. He received a cornea transplant and his sight returned. He is now going blind in his right eye and will need another cornea transplant.

"People told me I couldn't do this, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do this and I couldn't do that. And rather than internalizing that, which is what most people do, it just made me stronger," said Cecil.

So it's not surprising that he can relate to salespeople - who hear no all the time, probably even in their sleep.

Cecil teaches techniques for making sales and growing a business to salespeople, sales managers and business owners at the University of San Diego.

But it's actually unfair to call these mere sales techniques.

They're ways to communicate - and will work just as well for folks who want a better rapport with their spouse, their boss or their children.

"What he's teaching us is not exactly just for sales; it's for everyday life," said one of Cecil's students, Danny Kress, who sells construction equipment for All Access Rentals in Spring Valley. "Whether it's for work, dating, just dealing with your everyday people, even just going to the store, dealing with somebody. It's definitely more versatile than just in sales."

Buyers have a system, Cecil explained. They tend to mislead sellers because they've been lied to.

It becomes a poker game - where the buyers want to know what is being sold, the price, whom the seller has worked with, and his or her reputation. The buyer sees the seller's cards and the seller sees nothing. Now there's a tough way to win at poker.

The typical selling system, Cecil said, is to find potential buyers; try to qualify them as prospects; give presentations or demonstrations; attempt to close the deal; overcome objections; try to close the deal again; and overcome objections again. By the end of the day, the sale is completed or the potential buyer never wants to see the seller again.

Cecil's approach is to forget the poker game. People buy when they have pain, he said. Your refrigerator is broken, the food is going bad and your spouse urges you to get a new one. You're not going to research "fridges" on the Internet or check a dozen stores looking for the best price. You're going to buy and buy quickly.

Cecil teaches his salespeople to solve the buyer's pain, become a trusted confidant. After the salesperson figures out if the buyers have pain, then see if they have the money to pay for the product and have the authority to make the decision to buy.

If the correct answers come up, then make the presentation. Don't show all your cards unless you know the buyer is a prospect, not a suspect. Qualify the buyer hard and close the sale easily.

"There was a gentleman in here earlier who left and said, 'This stuff works. The only time it doesn't work is when I don't use it,' " Cecil said after a recent class. "Another gentleman said, 'This doesn't just help me in my sales, it helps me in my life, with my wife.' To me, that's worth all the money right there - helping people out whether or not he's making a sale right at that particular point. To me that's even more important - saving relationships or even helping relationships."

The concept of pattern interrupt is critical to Cecil's approach.

Don't walk into a potential buyer's office and say, "Is that a picture of your wife on the wall?" That's what every salesperson who walks into that office says.

Using pattern interrupt, salespeople learn not to look like a seller, act like one, talk like one or dress like one. Because if you do, the buyer's walls come up.

As children, we're taught not to talk to strangers and not to talk about money. Maybe, Cecil surmised, that's why buyers are so leery when talking to sellers. What are salespeople? Strangers asking executives for money.

Cecil teaches an honest, upfront approach. Now there's a novel approach - salespeople who can look someone in the eye and the buyer and seller can actually believe what the seller is "selling".

"We're not gonna hide price. We're gonna tell you exactly what we're gonna do and then we're gonna do it. We're gonna have ground rules for the sale. We're gonna find out if you have a concern. You may not even want to work with us. I tell people, "This (Cecil's approach) will not work for everyone and it may not work for you." "

Cecil really does have a lot to learn about selling. Doesn't he know that selling is all about deception, lies, telling the buyers what they want to hear? You can't tell people that what you're offering may not work for them.

Can you?

"We focus on behavior, attitude and technique," he said. "A lot of people just focus on technique, which is 20 ways to close, 15 ways to overcome objection. " If someone doesn't think they can sell, they can't sell. We focus on the behavior, which is we teach people how to be effective salespeople. Even if they don't know it, we tell them to fake it until they make their act as if they're a successful salesperson and they'll end up being that way."

In addition to teaching as the president of San Diego Sales, Inc., the San Diego licensee of the Sandler Sales Institute, Cecil has owned Disability Resources Consulting since 1992.

The 40-year-old Bay Park resident, a father of three, has trained customer service employees for the San Diego Padres, taught ethics at SeaWorld San Diego, performed diversity training at Qualcomm Inc., and given motivational speeches around the country.

"Sales is a trade where you're 70 to 80 percent unsuccessful most of the time," said Brian McArthur, a regional marketing director for Hartford Financial Services, after attending one of Cecil's recent classes. "The 20 percent that you are successful is very, very rewarding. But it can get back to how you balance your role as a salesperson with your identity as a person. I think that's what will give all of us the long-term perspective we need to not just stay in the industry but consistently grow our businesses."

Individuals can enroll in Cecil's ongoing sales training anytime. To contact him, send an e-mail to sdsales@sandler.com or call (858) 272-8654.

Brad Sondak is the deputy editor of the San Diego Business Journal.   This article appeared in the San Diego Business Journal on September 13, 2004