When my eldest son was eleven, he said to me ‘Mum I don’t believe everybody lives by selling something’. I said, ‘That’s interesting, why do you say that?’ and he started to try to persuade and convince me as to why this statement wasn’t true. So I said to him ‘by you trying to persuade and convince me why this isn’t true, aren’t you trying to sell me something?’ To which he said ‘Ahh, I get it Mum.’
Yes, we are all in sales, one way or another.
If you have ever tried to initiate contact with a person and persuade them about the merits of a new idea, service, or initiative -and who hasn’t? – you were selling something.
Selling is part of being human. It is when humans solve problems, realise opportunities and exchange something of value.
Selling is how we open up new pathways to new ideas and options; selling is, in part, how we relate to each other; selling is the vehicle that allows opportunity to flourish and people to prosper.
In short, sales skills are really life skills that we can use anywhere, any time in our personal, professional and community lives when we want to proactively engage with other people and to get things happening.
However, most people are oblivious to the power of selling and how it can help them in their day to day lives. Instead, many are frightened by the concept of selling because a) selling is often portrayed as something bad or dishonourable, and b) the mere fact of approaching someone about something, especially strangers, is seen as too intrusive, pushy, rude, or difficult, and they couldn’t possibly do that.
Selling is about your intentions. Good selling is also about building the bridges of trust with each other.
Selling is also an assertive act. Selling is about being proactive; on the front foot; taking the lead; bringing new ideas to the fore. Selling sometimes requires us to approach people about something that might be of interest to them with the possibility they might say NO.
A lot of people worry about this: ‘What if they reject me?’ ‘What if they say NO?’
They have a point. There is such a thing as The Fear of Rejection and this keeps many, many people from realising opportunities, advancing their careers, winning new clients, starting and staying open for business.
“Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe enforced obedience. Fear of rejection isn’t psychological, it’s biological, it’s in our cells”. Steven Pressfield.
The fear of rejection goes all the way back to our ancient roots. When we lived in tribes and survived as hunter-gatherers, the price of being rejected or being ostracised meant you were likely to be ejected from the tribe and this often equated to a death sentence. For humans, who are social animals, rejection is not just emotionally painful, but physically painful. Research shows that rejection triggers the same brain pathways that are activated when we experience physical pain and we usually feel the pain of rejection in the region of our heart and solar plexus and it is often associated with the feeling of shame which is one of the deepest fears we have. Anyone reading this will likely have experienced that feeling several times in their lives.
This is the biggest reason why people fear the proactive nature of selling.
What if I’m rejected? I don’t like feeling that way. Who does?
However, if we want to go after things in our life, if we want to start a business, if we want to advance our careers, we can learn how to overcome and manage the fear of rejection, and learn the craft of ethical, human centred selling practices. By doing this we can turbo charge our lives, our careers, our businesses with proactive, positive energy and agency.
Once we start to shift our perception of selling to the positive life enabling resource that it is, we already are on the path to improving our skills because we start to enlist and put into play all the human communications skills and qualities of good and ethical sales practices.
For those of us who have talents and capabilities we want to take to market (and isn’t that nearly all of us?) we need to harness the capabilities of human-centred, ethical selling practices. Without this essential life skill we cannot realise our own potential.
In a business environment, nothing happens until something gets sold. If you have a business or work for a business, you are either in sales or supporting directly or indirectly the sales function.
As stated earlier, selling is the vehicle that allows opportunity to flourish and people to prosper, so let’s embrace our inner salesperson and start finding and realising opportunities.
So come on, join us on the Selling Better journey and learn how to sell and embrace your inner salesperson. You might just enjoy the ride.
Remember everybody lives by selling something.
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