Selling is the single most important skill of an entrepreneur. It is the single most important skill in life. Period. Why so? Because in every single interaction you engage in, a sale is made. What does this mean? It means every single time you talk to a person or even talk to yourself. You are selling. Hold on. Hold on. You are going too fast. Sure. Let me give you a few examples.
You woke up this morning feeling great and well. What did you decide to do today? You had to sell a message to yourself. To persuade yourself of the most important thing to do today. Now you are doing it. Yep, you just sold to yourself. Heck, you have to sell yourself to yourself every day to like yourself.
If you are a parent, you are selling good manners and behavior to your kids every day. When you can persuade them, they do what you want. If not, then they sold to themselves better than you did.
In an actual ‘sales’ transaction, a sale is made whether the person buys or not. Why? The seller’s job is to assist the buyer to make a purchase. If that doesn’t happen then the buyer sold the outcome of no purchase to the seller.
So, as it turns out the ability to ‘sell’ or persuade is an extremely important skill for us to become wealthy. The question is how do you persuade someone? To answer that, let’s find out how human beings make decisions.
How do we decide?
Jim Camp in, Starting With No, writes that 100% of all human decisions are emotional. All the actions and decisions we make are for emotional reasons. We do or make decisions because of how it makes us feel. So, we decided to read or go shopping today because of how it makes us feel. Emotions are the driver of all our decisions even when we evaluate our decisions ‘logically’, it is the one with enough emotional context we finally settle on.
What do all human beings want?
If our emotions are what determines what we do. What do all human beings want? The favorite radio station for all human beings is WII-FM – What’s In It For Me. We are always looking in our best interest. We always want what’s in it for us. The benefits or the value of the service to us is our primary focus.
How do you persuade a person?
Now we know what drives human decisions and what we want. How can you persuade a person? You have to explain to the customer how the products or services benefit them.
Now there is an important distinction to be made here. It is not your perceived benefit of the product or service to the customer but what the customer finds as valuable in your service or product.
What do you do to persuade a person?
You persuade a person by asking. Telling is not selling, says Brian Tracy. You cannot talk a person into buying a product. Most salespeople are in the business of convincing customers. So, they tell the customer’s product descriptions and quality. They talk and talk and come off needy and pushy. Unfortunately being needy and pushy does help a sales situation. Why? Human beings have been running away from things that chase them and chase things that they desire.
The best sales strategy I know of is for the salesperson to think of themselves as an “assistant buyer” as Zig Ziglar explains. Your role is to help the customer make a decision based on the best solution to their unique challenge or problem. The customer has to be guided to take the best option that solves their challenge or problem.
Let me give you a quick story, a person visits a Dentist. After general maintenance and cleaning, he asks the Dentist, how should I brush my teeth? The Dentist answered, brush ONLY the teeth you want to KEEP. This sentence frames the brushing of a person’s teeth into a benefit unto themselves. It is their choice to brush and keep all their teeth or lose them. The Dentist is acting as an “assistant buyer” and guiding the patient into a good outcome that benefits them. That is the point about good selling.
The strategy is simple. Ask questions. Find out what the customer challenge or problem is. You suggest bespoke solutions to the customers’ challenges.
If the service or product solves the customer’s problem, you will make the sale. As Ziglar says, if you can relieve the customer’s itch, he will scratch around for the money to pay for it.
My thoughts
Selling is not something that only “salespeople” do. It is something that we all do every day and in every single interaction. We need to ask good questions. Make ourselves listen a little more and provide unique solutions to customer challenges or problems. To miss out on this valuable skill is to miss out on life itself. As Entrepreneurs, it is a paramount skill for us to have to build wealth.
Until next wealth builders, let’s build wealth
Newsletter
If you found this article helpful, consider subscribing to our newsletter.
The Benjilo Podcast: Listen & Subscribe
