I live by the philosophy that everybody lives by selling something.
I also believe -I know- that Selling is a powerful agent for personal, social and political change.
Many people treat selling as a business function, which it is. However, they often see it as something done by others – those called salespeople. Yet when it comes to enacting any kind of change – personal, social, environmental, political – we need to embrace our inner salesperson to take charge and take action.
Knowing how to sell, ethically and honourably, is a game changer on every level.
We might have an idea or initiative we want to take to market, to our colleagues, to our community, to the nation; to do so we must first understand our audience, community, voters – listen to them and find out what is important and determine their priorities, concerns, desires, and aspirations before we launch anything.
Their needs, priorities, concerns, dreams, and desires will inform us and them about how we can engage and move forward together.
This helps us shape what we do and how we position our offer, our message, our promise.
Engaging people in the process of developing effective solutions that they can see themselves benefiting from is at the heart of human-centred selling.
Working together in collaboration to create a shared future of mutual prosperity is what wins us loyal customers, voters, and the like.
I participated in and witnessed this firsthand when I became campaign manager for Zoe Daniel who contested the federal seat of Goldstein on 21st May 2022.
Back in early 2021, as Voices of Goldstein, we held Kitchen Table Conversations (KTC) to listen to the concerns and aspirations of the Goldstein community. We gave them a voice and took on board what they wanted to see in government and for our community and nation – our version of market research. What we discovered was an overwhelming desire for change – action on climate, integrity, equality, and prosperity – the 4 tenets that would form the pillars of Zoe Daniel’s campaign. The groundswell of support in Goldstein was incredible even before Zoe was announced as our candidate. In late November 2021 when we announced to the Goldstein community that Zoe was our candidate, we gave people a compelling reason -a clear value proposition- to get involved with the campaign. We also had to sell the idea of becoming a volunteer on Zoe’s campaign – our sales team recruitment drive. I wish every sales recruitment drive was as easy as this one. We had people flocking to join Team Zoe.
We explained that if we were to win the seat of Goldstein it was going to be done with people on the ground having conversations with others. We said our number one job was to win Share-of-Mind first then Share-of-Vote for Zoe with the voters of Goldstein.
The volunteers knew from the start that this was an on-the-ground human-to-human sales-lead campaign and our efforts would be underpinned by an outstanding strategy and segmentation analysis reinforced by an advertising campaign and social media plan plus merchandising, everything working in concert.
We said that as a minimum we needed Team Zoe people in Zoe t-shirts everywhere having conversations with others every single day. We had to be disciplined and stick to our messaging.
However, most of our volunteers had never been in a sales role before, and many were a bit nervous before they started.
We trained all our volunteers on how to doorknock, make telephone calls and have conversations with people, how to get others engaged, how to listen, ask questions, and answer, ‘Why Zoe?’, ‘Why an independent?’ and how to enlist more volunteers. Once people knew Zoe was a viable option the rest was easy.
Everyone in Team Zoe embraced their inner salesperson.
Our volunteers doorknocked 44,000+ houses, had 4,000+ telephone conversations, participated in 50+ street meets, lots of bike rides, walks, swarms, swims, choirs, fund raising functions, community events and many other person-to-person activities.
They could see they could make a real difference to our community and our nation.
We had purpose and we had an engaged volunteer community who went out rain, hail or shine to engage with the Goldstein community and present Zoe as a viable choice at the election.
Team Zoe volunteers were our sales force, and that sales force grew to 1,500 people by election time.
The result: Zoe was elected as the member for Goldstein on Saturday evening 21st May 2022.
Not once did we take the people in our community for granted. We listened to them and gave them a voice. We gave them a legitimate viable choice. And in doing so we gave them hope for a better future.
We helped people dispel the feelings of impotence, the ‘there’s nothing I can do to change this situation’. This campaign, and others like it, gave people agency and the power to make real change at a local and national level. Everyone embraced their inner salesperson as a powerful agent for change.
Rather than something to be frightened or dismissive of, ethical human-centred selling skills empower people to change things for the better.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
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