People usually have a negative perception when it comes to the idea of selling. It’s not looked too favorably upon as it usually conjures up images of pushy, deceitful, snake oil type salesmen who will do all they can to rip the other person off.
The reality is that everybody sells in life. Everybody. All the time too, even if they don’t know it. It’s just hidden under different words and terms like persuading, influencing, helping people to understand, etc.
We sell all the time in our lives. We sell when we suggest to our friends where to take a road trip or where to take a vacation to our families. We sell in job interviews, we sell in the workplace when we want to implement a new idea or proposal, we sell when we try to get capital from investors to start our own businesses, we even sell when we date if you think about it.
That being said, the fact that selling permeates all areas of our lives, it only makes sense to learn how to sell in life.
The first barrier to overcome when it comes to selling is to get any negative perceptions about selling out of your mind. There’s nothing wrong or sleazy about selling. True, there are some salesmen out there who give it a bad name, but selling is honorable, especially if it helps other people.
That’s the correct mindset to have when it comes to selling. You want to help other people by showing them exactly how what you are proposing, in other words what you’re selling, will help them.
The reason why selling gets so much resistance from people is that people naturally resist change. Change is scary. It’s uncomfortable. It puts a kink in the routine, but that’s not to say that people will never embrace change.
People will only change when the added value of the change is clearly shown to them.
Your job is to sell that change by clearly showing exactly what that added value is.
Clarity cannot be stressed enough here. Clarity is so important in sales. You have to be able to clearly answer questions other people think of such as: “What’s in it for me? Why should I? What’s the added value?”
After the pitch is given, people will naturally still try to resist by coming up with objections as they’re not completely sold yet.
Anticipate those objections and answer them.
This brings up one of the main ideas about selling and that is that half the battle in selling is preparing.
Prepare your approach, your message, your delivery, your counters to the objections you know will come up, and the best way to do this is simply to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. See things from their point of view, see what questions they might come up with, see what their reactions to your current “pitch” will be and adjust accordingly.
All that could be labeled as the “technical” side of selling.
There’s another side to selling that’s usually not given enough weight and that is simply the ability to interact with people.
People who are natural in dealing with other people are usually the best salesmen. They’re very knowledgeable when it comes to conversation and seeing what the hidden meanings are in certain expressions that are said, the kind of signals that certain types of body language sends, they understand how to build rapport, they understand human nature, they’re able to easily relate and all those things combined give selling that “soft” touch that really helps seal the deal.
This is importance because it ties into another side of selling that can really help and that is simply working on yourself.
When you work on yourself, selling becomes a whole lot easier.
Work on yourself by developing your social skills, your conversation skills, your ability to identify the hidden meanings behind things said or done by other people. Be responsible. Deliver what you promised on time. Be dependable. Keep your word. Brand yourself as someone who is trustworthy and reliable and that will make selling on your part, a heck of a lot easier in the future. People will listen less to your “pitch” and more to “you” as a whole. The only catch to this is that it takes time and rightfully so and that it’s a whole lot easier said than done as well.
The best salesmen out there are the ones who genuinely want to help other people and express their desire to do so through careful preparation, clarity of delivery, and consistency in following through with the help. People will usually pick up on that and the rest will flow naturally.
