I’m not in sales is a common reply from many in the business community when asked what they do. I could never sell is also heard from people who look down on the sales department as they head out for another ubiquitous cup of coffee with a client or march door to door, cold call or head for a late lunch with no imminent return scheduled.
Of course the title is much closer to the truth if your company produces or markets anything nowadays. From the first contact the customer has with your company to the continuing relationship you should develop all the way to the CEO, sales is involved. Every service is a sale, every meeting is a sale, and every conversation with a client is a sale. The last time your kids convinced you to stop at McDonalds it was a sales job. The last time you talked your partner into attending that less than kosher weekend with the boys, it was a sale.
The “I’m not selling anything” line does not work if you are honest with yourself. From selling yourself and your image on a daily basis to helping your company survive to traversing the world of social media, all aspects of your life involve some kind of sales.
To make you the best, the skill is in finding your level of comfort on the integrity scale of selling. Do you believe in your product? Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe in the integrity surrounding the sales conclusion? If you answer yes to the above then you aren’t just selling you are advocating and your level of credibility is such that people are looking to you for opinions and reasons to buy from you.
The highest level of salesmanship belongs to the rare few who sell nothing but are so revered for their opinions, knowledge and credibility that people take their view on products and marketing so seriously as to become evangelists for their views and sell for them.
So where are you on that scale? You have to ask yourself the serious questions and if you come up with answers not to your liking, it may be your belief in the product or it may be your image and integrity you are concerned with and that may be time to make a change.
People don’t like to be sold but they love to buy. Why not from you?
1 comment:
Oli,
Thanks for the insight and as Peter Drucker (social ecologist extraordinaire) circa 1974 said:
“There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available…”
I am of the opinion that advertising/selling is something you do AFTER you have built Awareness, Interest, Trust and Loyalty through Social Media.
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