No matter what business you are in, what service you offer, what skills you have there is one underlying skill you have to have. You have to know how to sell. All business is about selling. In fact all life is one big selling campaign.
The point of business is to trade. I offer one thing and you buy it. It can be a skill, it can be knowledge or it can be a widget. It doesn’t matter. There is always a trade happening. One person offers something that another person accepts or rejects.
Everybody needs to be able to sell.
Sometimes the selling process is hidden and you don’t recognise it to be that. Let me give you a few examples.
The artist, and this applies to the bulk of the creative people making a living through their art, is not able to sell his art. He is shy, he doesn’t think his art is worth it, he can’t deal with people and many more reasons.
So he appoints an agent or gallery to handle the sale of his work. The bottom line is that all the artist has done is sell only to the gallery owner, rather than sell to individual buyers. It’s still a sale.
If the artist is unable to sell himself to a gallery then he can’t make a living.
You are a salaried employee. You push paper all day. You don’t have to sell. Yes you do. You sell every day. The first time you sell is when you sell yourself for the job. Then you sell yourself every day by pushing that paper efficiently. You are selling yourself to a boss every day to reassure him that you are a worthy member of staff.
You come in late to work every morning? You are losing a sale. Yourself as a staff member. Guess on whose desk that pink slip will land.
So every thing you do is a sales situation. You build a good relationship with a coworker, you are selling yourself as a good team member. You are friendly to a customer even though you are not in the sales department, maybe the receptionist, you are selling the company to the customer.
What about that Facebook entry? You set up a page about yourself. You are presenting yourself to the world. You are selling yourself as a product. It could be just to keep your friends. Whatever the reason, you are exhibiting yourself.
If your entire life is one big sales presentation then wouldn’t it be good to learn how to do it effectively? One would think so.
on Jun 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am
After 8 years in the Marine Corps I got into computers, on the technical side. I stayed really techie, for example developing a multi-cast video training solution for the internet before such things existed. ‘I was hired as a consultant by one of the big names, to deliver high tech network and telecom solutions - and suddenly I was a real salesman. In previous jobs I had to sell my ideas to the client, but that was about it. Here I was cold calling people to make sales of any technical solution that I could get them to buy.
I wish someone had sent me this post back in 1990. Then again, I probably would not have read it.
on Jun 13th, 2009 at 11:14 am
@Richard
Don’t we all have to learn this. I also got into sales by default. I was hired as admin manager, suddenly I’m selling! Wake up call that was.
on Jun 14th, 2009 at 6:45 am
This is so true.
Basically the reason our business battled to take off was because we couldn’t sell. We had good concepts and good people in different roles but we couldn’t sell for love or money.
We went through a couple of different routes - we hired young, inexperienced sales people (a bad move), we went agency route on a number of lines - some improvement but no consistency.
Work out how you are going to sell when you launch into your new business… Its IMPORTANT
on Jun 14th, 2009 at 8:36 am
@Marc
Totally agree with you. Many businesses undervalue the sales task and often it’s the last department that is set up properly. Also I think sales is often looked down upon as a lowly function, so nobody wants to bother about it.
on Jun 14th, 2009 at 8:46 am
[...] Merret recently wrote a post entitled “Do you know how to sell” on her Marketing Fundi [...]
on Jun 15th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
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