Selling is one of the world’s highest paid professions. And rightfully so.
Because very few people can sell. And even fewer people can sell well.
It’s a very hard skill to learn. You have to deal with a lot of rejection, you need to be patient, and you need to persevere. But if you can sell well, you’ve got it pretty made when it comes to your financial situation and your life in general.
Most people have a negative aversion of selling. They associate selling with somebody trying to rip them off.
But this is not so. Granted, there are salesmen out there who operate under this mentality, but all they really do is spoil it for the other salesmen.
If the produce/service is genuinely good and adds value to people, then it becomes really easy to sell because you want to. Nothing eats more at a salesman of good conscience than knowing that what he’s selling is a scam.
We all get sold to on a daily basis and we all sell on a daily basis as well, even if we are not aware of these subtle facts of life.
We get sold to via television commercials, billboard ads, other people, and society in general.
Then we turn inward and sell to ourselves, sell things like – we can’t take on that dream we have, that we don’t have enough contacts, money, experience, etc. to do it.
We are masters at selling ourselves on these kinds of things.
But the irony here is that we are masters of selling ourselves on the wrong things – the things that are not constructive to building our ideal self and that help us move toward our goals.
Of all the selling that goes in this world, one of THE most important types is being able to sell ourselves positively to ourselves.
This is very important because very, very, few people will ever sell you on you (aside from the few motivational pep talks you get from close friends and family), and very few people will ever take the time to do this and what’s more, truth be told, they can’t sell you on you as effectively as you can yourself, simply because they are NOT you.
We know ourselves the very best, inside and out. Even if we don’t think we do, we really do.
But as difficult as it is to sell things to other people, it’s probably 100 times harder to sell ourselves to ourselves. Why?
Because we are our own worst critics.
Nobody, and I mean nobody on the face of this earth, is better at the task of pointing out our own faults and shortcomings than ourselves. Parents, in laws, and significant others come close in second place, but they can’t hold a candle to what we are able to do to ourselves.
And the sad part is, that this is how most people sell themselves.
They always sell themselves short.
Why?
Because it’s so easy to find mistakes in other people and their thinking, to cut others down, to point out other people’s flaws and when people do this (which 99.9% of people do), it becomes VERY dangerous ground to stand on as it then becomes extremely easy to do the exact same things to ourselves.
We have to reverse this process and sell ourselves in the other direction. The question is how?
First, in order for people to sell well, they need accurate knowledge of the product and service they are selling. They have to know it inside out. And what you’ll find is that a lot of companies will actually require their salesmen to buy the products and services they are selling in order to spend some time with them, getting to know them inside out and from all angles so they know what they’re dealing with.
By doing this, salesmen gain confidence and clarity throughout the entire selling process because they know exactly what it is they’re selling and they have no doubt as to what it all entails.
By the same token, you have to know exactly what it is you are trying to sell to yourself on. And this will be different for most people because we are all at different points in our lives. It may be your ideal self or a specific quality/train of thought you need to sell yourself on that fits your current situation, but the fact remains, you need to be very specific.
After that, the next thing salesmen need to do is back what they are selling with evidence. We also need evidence to back up whatever it is we are trying to sell ourselves on. Again, this will be different for each of our respective selling points, but what you’ll discover is that you can find evidence in the form of your own past experiences, from experiences of other people, or just from things that come to mind when you look for supporting evidence around you. The truth is, you can pretty much find enough evidence to back up any claim you want, so long as you look hard enough to find (think of all the dead end debates that people engage in).
After you do this, objections will come up, but that’s a good thing because it signals you’re at the last stretch of your selling journey. Objections should come up and it’s obvious you need to overcome them to climb that last “hump” of the sales process. You can do this by providing even more evidence to back up your claim or just by thinking of any examples/ideas/information that can counter your objections. Again, you’ll find you can pretty much counter any objection if you think long and hard enough about it. There’s always two sides to a story.
And last but not least is consistency. We have to constantly sell ourselves to ourselves on a day to day basis.
What you’ll find is that there will be a constant battle between the world selling you on who you should be or what you should do and you selling yourself on who YOU should be and what YOU should do.
Companies know that consistency is half the battle in sales. That’s why you see ads for the same company on TV, on the billboards when you drive, and in the stores you shop. They are drilling their message into your head, selling their products/services to you through sheer repetition.
And it works. Think back to all the things you recently bought and you’ll see that constant exposure to that particular product/service played a big part in the selling process.
Companies pay millions of dollars to air their own commercial during the SuperBowl but do you know how long most of these commercials are?
Most last for only 30 seconds.
30 seconds to sell you, the viewer, on the company’s products/services/brand name, etc.
30 seconds. Millions of dollars.
If companies can effectively sell viewers in only 30 seconds, you should be able to sell yourself in a short amount of time as well.
Try drafting your own 30 second commercial (it will probably be a 90-120 second commercial) that incorporates all these elements we’ve discussed – what exactly you’re trying to sell yourself on, evidence to back it up, counters to every conceivable objections that may arise and seal the deal with consistency.
Commit this consolidated commercial to yourself everyday and you’ll discover that your selling point will become a part of you and that’s ultimately how you want it all to turn out.
If you don’t take the time to sell yourself on yourself, you WILL succumb to what other people and the world in general are selling you to believe about yourself.
Learn how to sell yourself positively to yourself and what you’ll find is that it’ll be the foundation for everything else you do in life.
