Most people are always striving to better themselves. It’s the “Growth Mindset Way”. For proof, check the sales figures on the number of self-improvement books sold each year. This is not a pitch for you to jump in and start selling these kinds of books, but it is an indication of people’s awareness that in order to better themselves, they have to continue improving their personal selling abilities.
The power of knowledge and confidence in selling
To excel in any selling situation, you must have confidence, and confidence comes, first and foremost, from knowledge. You have to know and understand yourself and your goals. You have to recognize and accept your weaknesses as well as your special talents. This requires a kind of personal honesty that not everyone is capable of exercising.
Man, know thyself!
In addition to knowing yourself, you must continue learning about people. Just as with yourself, you must be caring, forgiving and laudatory with others. In any sales effort, you must accept other people as they are, not as you would like for them to be. One of the most common faults of sales people is impatience when the prospective customer is slow to understand or make a decision. The successful salesperson handles these situations the same as he would if he were asking a girl for a date, or even applying for a new job.
Develop a keen interest in your product
Learning your product, making a clear presentation to qualified prospects, and closing more sales will take a lot less time once you know your own capabilities and failings, and understand and care about the prospects you are calling upon.
You were sold on this article before you read!
Our society is predicated upon selling, and all of us are selling something all the time. We move up or stand still in direct relation to our sales efforts. Everyone is included, whether we’re attempting to be a friend to a co-worker, a neighbor, or selling multi-million-dollar real estate projects. Accepting these facts will enable you to understand that there is no such thing as a born salesman. Indeed, in selling, we all begin at the same starting point, and we all have the same finish line as the goal – a successful sale.
You can and have been selling
Most assuredly, anyone can sell anything to anybody. As a qualification to this statement, let us say that some things are easier to sell than others, and some people work harder at selling than others. But regardless of what you’re selling, or even how you’re attempting to sell it, the odds are in your favor.
If you make your presentation to enough people, you’ll find a buyer. The problem with most people seems to be in making contact – getting their sales presentation seen by, read by, or heard by enough people. But this really shouldn’t be a problem, as we’ll explain later. There is a problem of impatience, but this too can be harnessed to work in the salesperson’s favor.
We have established that we’re all sales people in one way or another. So whether we’re attempting to move up from forklift driver to warehouse manager, waitress to hostess, salesman to sales manager or from mail order dealer to president of the largest sales organization in the world, it’s vitally important that we continue learning.
Become a productivity beast. Make no excuses
Getting up out of bed in the morning; doing what has to be done in order to sell more units of your product;Â keeping records, updating your materials; planning the direction of further sales efforts; and all the while increasing your own knowledge—all this very definitely requires a great deal of personal motivation, discipline, and energy. But then the rewards can be beyond your wildest dreams, for make no mistake about it, the selling profession is the highest paid occupation in the world!
Selling is challenging. It demands the utmost of your creativity and innovative thinking. The more success you want, and the more dedicated you are to achieving your goals, the more you’ll sell. Hundreds of people the world over become millionaires each month through selling. Many of them were flat broke and unable to find a “regular” job when they began their selling careers. Yet they’ve done it, and you can do it too!
Selling is your gateway to wealth
Remember, it’s the surest way to all the wealth you could ever want. You get paid according to your own efforts, skill, and knowledge of people. If you’re ready to become rich, then think seriously about selling a product or service (preferably something exclusively yours) – something that you “pull out of your brain”; something that you write, manufacture or produce for the benefit of other people. But failing this, the want ads are full of opportunities for ambitious sales people. You can start there, study, learn from experience, and watch for the chance that will allow you to move ahead by leaps and bounds.
This article originally appeared on Daniel Sarpong Jnr’s Blog with the same title
About the author
Daniel Sarpong, MBA, Global Sales Coach popularly known as Africa’s Greatest Sales Coach. He is a Pan-Africanist and global business development consultant, author and trainer, equipped with wisdom and pragmatic training skills which make his sessions efficient for achieving effective results.
Daniel has organized and also partnered with many businesses, incubators and accelerators to train thousands of business executives, entrepreneurs, managers and students from over 26 different countries. He specializes in Sales, Client Management, Customer Experience and Sales Leadership. Daniel is currently the Head of Marketing and Digital Media Strategy and the Executive Director of Impact Network Global. Reach him on 0203809248 and [email protected]
