The Desert of Arizona
Rain 43 Degrees – 10:08 a.m.
For a good 15 years of my self-inflicted business education, I focused on learning how to sell.
While this is helpful, I’ve finally realized it’s exactly backwards. Which is why it’s so “hard” or even distasteful for many people to do. It feels weird and awkward to them because… well, it’s kind of weird and awkward.
For most people, it simply ends up being a covert operation in coercion. Not something you’d be proud to tell your grandmother.
Instead of focusing on how to sell, focus on how and what the people you help want to buy.
This requires an education in itself because you have to develop your ability to rewire the way you perceive the world.
You have to step off your throne at the center of the universe and put yourself on someone else’s throne and view things from there.
So this is a completely different skillset. And it’s one I wish I would have known about from the beginning.
Traditional selling leads you in the direction of trying to answer the question, “How do I get them to buy this thing?”
You are actively doing something to someone else to achieve a particular outcome.
This other approach leads you to answer a very different question from the perspective of your prospective client or customer, “What would I want to buy and how would I want to buy it?”
Instead of using the powers of coercion, you are engineering the purchase in advance by actually creating something your buyers want.
If you are able to do that, you go on a very different journey. The sun is brighter, the food tastes better, the air is warmer and it’s a lot more fun.
When you get this part of the equation right, resistance goes to almost ZERO. “Selling” doesn’t really need to happen.
So how do you do this?
That’s another benefit that comes from publishing on a consistent basis. These daily emails are an example. Because when I write them, real people respond! And when people respond, they say things that give me clues… clues about recurring problems that I might solve.
I get an unlimited number of opportunities to put myself in someone else’s shoes and answer the question, “What would help me achieve my goals?”