I Don’t Want to be a Salesperson
Add comment October 13th, 2007
When you hear the word “salesperson” do you cringe? But you realize that if you don’t learn to sell you’ll be out of business. You probably are a very talented person with special skills or training that youve worked hard to obtain. You may have been using these talents as an employee, and decided it was time to go out on your own so you went into business. Or perhaps youve just gotten your shiny new degree and now you need to pay back all those college loans. You may have thought that all you needed to do was hang your shingle and the work would come in. But now you know better.
It may really rub your ego raw to think that you have to sell yourself, but youve come to terms with the fact that if you dont you wont be in business long. Ok, so you have to learn how to sell but you just cant bring yourself to use the stupid opening lines sales people have used with you. Or the high-pressure closing tactics youve been on the receiving end of. The good news is you dont want to, and you dont have to. In fact, you never want to use the approach that you probably associate with the career sales training employed by poor sales people.
Caught up in your strong aversion to sales youve overlooked the fact that there is a huge cavernous difference between salespeople and sales professionals. Youre already a professional so why not learn the skills and talents of a sales professional obtained through effect career sales training. A sales professional understands that sales success comes from the long-term relationships you develop not from the one time quick sales that have either no relationship or a very negative relationship as their foundation.
Actually what you really want to learn is how to position yourself to obtain the positive attention of your ideal prospects and then help them to make a buying decision. Youre already really good at helping people, arent you? And Ill bet you know how and where to find your ideal prospects if you do a little thinking. So, now all you need to do is learn how to sell by helping people buy.
Instead of trying to coerce people even the wrong people to buy, youre really trying to exclude the wrong people quickly so you can get to the right people. When you were a little kid werent you able to get your parents to do what you wanted? Havent you ever sold a peer or leader on your idea? See you probably know a lot more about sales than you think. But just to get your confidence up and to get a feel for where you could make some improvements you might want to see how you measure up against top producers whove perfected the skills they learned through their career sales training.
