Success in Life Depends on Sales Skill
I am not a professional sales guru, but I came to the realization late in life how important the elements of sales are to success. I now tell all of my students – and anyone else who will listen – how critical sales skills are to personal and professional success.
My first exposure to the sales scene was when I was 16. My brother and I took a bus downtown to apply for “management positions.” We were loaded into a car, driven to a strange neighborhood in the suburbs, and told to knock on doors to sell magazine subscriptions. That experience left such a nasty taste in my mouth it took me almost four decades to get over it. I’m sure my story is not uncommon. It also doesn’t help that many people picture someone in the sales profession as a telemarketer or a high-pressure used car salesperson.
Get over it!
Our entire economic system is based on sales. Every day of your life you are on one side or the other of a sales transaction. Additionally, you sell yourself to a potential employer, convince your supervisor of your value to the department, or convince your CEO of the value of your department to the company. You also sell yourself and the value of your relationship to your spouse, significant other or life partner every day!
In 2002, I started my own Human Resource consulting practicein the Buffalo NY area. It became apparent very quickly that if I wanted to put food on the table, I needed to sell my services. (I might also mention that I’m an introvert.) So with a sense of urgency, I worked to get over my four-decade-long distaste for this sales stuff and tried to make sense of it .
Understanding the Sales Process by Components
The elements of sales as I see them are: networking, listening, problem solving, creating value, negotiating, and learning to accept rejection. In my business, I see sales as relationship building. I want my clients to stay with me for a long time, as opposed to a one-time sale. Therefore, it is also important for me to deliver quality with integrity.
Networking is one of the skills that many people think they do very well, but actually do very poorly. It is not enough to go to an event, hand out 50 business cards and talk to everyone in the room. What have you learned from each person? What are they looking for, what do they do, and how can you help them?
It is a hard skill to master, but you need to listen more than you talk. How can you learn what someone is looking for, or what his/her expectations are unless you listen? I learned this valuable lesson from doing thousands of employment interviews. As a business owner, listening carefully allows me to explore opportunities to solve a problem.
A successful salesperson must be able to describe whatever he or she is offering in such a way that it creates value for the customer. This value proposition is critical. If you can’t describe your offering in a manner that creates value in the other person’s eyes, you’re not likely to make the sale. Furthermore, once you create value, the task of negotiating the sale becomes a piece of cake – you’ve already created the proverbial win-win situation with your customer.
One of the hardest skills to learn is accepting rejection and moving on. I’ve seen too many job candidates get rejected for one job and then get into a funk. Who wants to hire someone who is in a funk? Don’t kid yourself –it shows! Almost every successful person I know excels in being able to accept rejection and use it as motivation to try again.
One tool for handling rejection is the concept of getting 99 no’s. Successful salespeople understand that they are going to be told no, so they check them off as they come. The law of averages kick in and by the time you reach the 99th no, you’ll have gotten at least one yes (and hopefully a lot more than one). Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and do it again.
The final lesson I needed to learn was to actually ask for the sale (whether that sale is a promotion, job, date, etc.). If you don’t ask, how will you get a yes?
I’m still not sure if I would enjoy – or be able to – go door to door selling magazines, but I do know I can build relationships and help solve problems by networking, listening, creating value and moving beyond rejection. .
Now it’s your turn – go be successful!
Published By admin on Oct 22 - Comments (1)