Salespeople Who Give Selling a Bad Name

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Clear 62 Degrees 4:50 a.m.

Yesterday, I published a new issue of my paid newsletter, The Incomparable Expert Field Report. If you like this Daily Journal, that newsletter is the next step for you. At $99 per YEAR, I’m confident saying it’s a value like you won’t find anywhere else.

The focus of the issue was on selling. And I walked through how I’ve pieced together a selling system over the years based on some pretty smart people.

I have to say, it seems that salespeople have given selling a bad name. Because at the core of it, selling is simply getting solutions to problems into the hands of people with problems.

And if you are able to retain that frame of mind, it’s a pretty noble and valuable pursuit. That is why it pays well. Problem solving usually pays well. The more expensive and painful the problem, the better the compensation for solving it.

Except somewhere, things took a turn for the worse. As is true with the majority of industries, disciplines and professions, MOST of the people in them are mediocre. Which means they sell in a way that bludgeons poor prospects over the head with the salesperson’s priorities and forgets to put the interests of the prospect FIRST.

If you’re in sales mode and all you can think about is making the sale, you’re going to lose. It may not be today or tomorrow. But eventually, people will tire of feeling “used” so you can make a dollar.

As Jeffrey Gitomer always says, “People hate to be sold but they love to buy.”

This means your focus isn’t on how to SELL, it’s how to make it easy to BUY.

You KNOW how to do this, because you’ve bought tons of things. So you have to flip around your viewfinder and start looking from their direction towards you.

Most likely, you’ll see a bunch of confusing signals. A bunch of red flags that you can fix quickly and easily.

Making it easy to buy means your prospects have the right information about what you do and why it’s valuable to them. They understand why you’re different. They understand how to take a step towards you. And they are in an environment where they’re not scared to death to say “YES.”

This is a tall order. And trying to satisfy all of these conditions in a SINGLE shot (or even three) is almost impossible. People are too skeptical, too cynical. They’ve been burned and let down far too many times to believe you just because you look like a friendly person.

You must prove it. You must earn it.

I’d recommend you do it slowly, using the media platform model. This gives them all the information they need in bite size pieces, over time.

Plus, it builds trust like nothing else I’ve seen.

Do you realize how valuable it is when you “show-up” for someone for an extended period of time? You want a “killer” U.S.P., try that! You won’t even have to put it into words for it to be effective.