When I asked a new client this week to explain their sales process, I was told that they didn’t like the idea of “selling.” This is not an unusual statement. I regularly encounter entrepreneurs and even midsize companies that believe producing a quality product or service is enough.
When I ask what they say when someone objects to their price or how they ask for business, I’m frequently met with a lot of chair-shifting and silence. They worry that selling will be uncomfortable or even offensive to their customer. You may have a phenomenal product or service, but if you can’t sell that product in the marketplace, it’s irrelevant.
Despite the fact that we are a capitalist society we maintain a cultural phobia and shame about selling. Transacting has existed before we were using shells as a form of currency, and now that we have moved further away from manufacturing our economy is becoming increasingly dependent upon service and selling. If you want to survive in this rapidly changing marketplace, you will do well to learn how to sell and become more comfortable with the sales process, because all business is sustained through the generation of revenue, and most jobs, particularly good jobs, are dependent upon transacting. If you can generate revenue you will never go hungry.
Salespeople: The Engine of Business
Attorneys, accountants, bankers, writers and architects have to sell. Selling is no longer relegated to certain professional demographics. Have you gone to the post office lately? You can’t mail a letter without being solicited for stamps, as well as expeditious and certified services.
I don’t know when or how our cultural aversion to selling evolved, but I can tell you that few people are proud to identify themselves as sales professionals despite the fact that salespeople are the engine of nearly every viable business you can name.
Elegant, Ethical, Professional and Valuable
It’s 2010, and we are using phrases like business and relationship development in place of the ‘S’ word, but at the end of the day we are all in the business of selling some product, service, idea or policy to someone. We are ALL selling something. Until you sell something in your business, you have no business. The sooner we elevate the sales profession and integrate and teach selling as a measurable, transferable skill, the more productive and rapid our growth. When done well, selling can be elegant, ethical, professional and valuable to consumers.
It’s important to believe that what you have to offer your customer is valuable and will improve the quality of his life or business. If you don’t believe that you need to find something else to sell. I encourage every professional to approach selling with less judgment, fear and anxiety, and with more methodology and precision. I assure you that the person you are selling to is selling something to someone else. Consider the sales process a value to you and your customer.
Lastly, I’ll let you in on a secret: There’s no such thing as a natural born salesperson — we were all trained.
This is a reprint of article I wrote for the San Diego Business Journal
