“I can’t sell” syndrome?

1. Everyone is selling something.
2. Selling is a profession characterized by a set of skills and behaviors with a highly quantifiable outcome.
3. Salespeople who create and keep customers are ones who make sure those customers’ needs are met, over and over again.
4. Not many parents hope their kids will grow up to be salespeople.
5. Effective selling is about creating desire in the customer for what we provide or do.
6. Good selling skills and behavior are based on listening and responding to the customer.
7. One of the biggest payoffs of effective selling is the opportunity to establish an ongoing relationship with customers.
8. Selling can be effortless, professional, and done with integrity.
9. Individuals who develop a “selling-on-purpose” attitude find the sales function to be not only one of the easiest parts of their jobs but often the most pleasurable as well.
10. No one is a born salesman, and no two salespeople do it the same way.
11. Even good enough product or service will not sell itself.
12. In sales, rejection is inevitable, but the pros know how to separate rejection of their product or service from rejection of themselves personally.
13. Sales professionals give first-class treatment to every customer.
14. One of the most satisfying aspects of truly effective selling is the beautiful harvest of repeat business and the effortless flow of new business from excellent word of mouth from satisfied customers.
15. If more data-entry people and receptionists had sales training, they would feel more qualified and empowered to represent their jobs and their companies with pride.
16. So many workers fall into what called “sales clerk syndrome”. They stock shelves and ring up sales on the cash register, and it never occurs to them that they have any responsibility to interact with real live customers. The difference between a salesperson and a clerk is the ability to overcome objections.
17. Everybody fights a constant battle to remain motivated. Except, of course, for those who have chosen the whine-and-make-excuses strategy.
18. Objections can be overcome by unrelenting pressure, facts, statistics, and testimonials – even if it’s not the most effective means for overcoming objections.
19. Creating an effective selling approach is essential to sales success. Understanding that it’s not always what you say but how you say it is not manipulative.
20. Customers can only be sold the difference between what they have and what they want

It’s the best way I know to make the selling practically effortless.

by Brigid McGrath