No matter what you do for a living, you’d best be doing sales.
The whole idea strikes fear into the hearts of so many business owners, professionals, even high-powered executives.
In fact, every Chamber meeting, business gathering and professional association I go to is packed with people who are scraping to get by. Because no matter how good they are at the service they provide, they’re so bad at selling it.
You’ll hear people say…in fact you may have heard me say…they hate selling. They feel sleazy. Or pushy. They don’t want to bother people. They hate to hear “no.” They can’t take the rejection.
We need to get over it. All of us.
The truth is, if you’re in business you’re in sales. Notice your own reaction to those words. If it’s “No, I’m not,” it’s time to think again.
Don’t you know entrepreneurs who wish, in their heart of hearts, that they could go back to a job–doing only what they’re good at and letting somebody else sell it? That’s why God made the sales department, right?
But people who work for big (or small) companies actually do have to sell, even if they’re not account executives. They have to sell their ideas, their projects and their value to the company. And ABC applies. They should Always Be Closing.
I spent the weekend at a seminar with David Neagle, the Master Income Acceleration Mentor. Mostly, it was not about sales. It was about personal freedom and it turns out that’s connected to sales. Here’s how…
When David said, “The cause of sales is – DESIRE,” I thought, well of course. If they desire what we’re selling, they buy it, right?
That’s not what he meant at all. It’s not the would-be buyer’s desire that matters. It’s the seller’s.
“You have to desire the sale more than you desire to avoid the possibility of being rejected,” he explained.
A lot of sales training programs assert there are no natural born sales people. That selling is a learned skill. And anybody can learn it.
David says, “Bullshit. Everybody is a natural born salesperson. The question is, when did you stop doing sales?”
He has a point, doesn’t he?
Remember when you’d go to mom or dad and sell them on, say, staying up past your bedtime? Or having an extra cookie? Or going to the park by yourself? You were doing some serious selling a lot of the time.
And here’s the thing. Maybe they said yes, maybe they said no. Either way, you didn’t cave in and decide never to ask for anything ever again.
In fact, odds are, it wasn’t long before you came right back to the Head Grownup in Charge with another red-hot idea. Why? Because you were a natural-born salesperson.
Most of us, somewhere along the way, stop asking.
By the time we’re adults with a business or a job, we ask for less. Or we ask, and then in the next breath, we give the person an out that makes it easy for them to say no. Or maybe it’s giving ourselves an out? Either way, we give up way too soon.
If David Neagle is right, we’ve firmly adopted the middle class mindset. “Middle class mindset says don’t be rude, don’t be pushy, don’t ask people personal questions,” he says. “Entrepreneur’s mindset is vastly different.”
And you can have that entrepreneur’s mindset whether you own your own business or work for someone else.
Entrepreneurs have the personal freedom to ask and keep asking.
They know they can be of service, they value what they do and they expect to be paid what they’re worth. Or, as David said, “There’s no amount of money for coaching I’m afraid to ask for.”
Now that’s fearless. I’m not there, are you? But here’s a question worth asking. If you were that fearless, what would your business look like?
Post a comment below to paint that picture for us or share a sales suggestion of your own.
