A stock photo of a patient consulting doctor.
Selling becomes incrementally easier and yields greater success each time you remind yourself that:
- Selling carries with it great responsibilities. Your employer depends on you, in large part, to keep the lights on, the doors open and to pay staff salaries, including her/his own.
- Like a doctor, a salesperson is a diagnostician with very limited time. If a prospect cannot convince you they need what you sell then they are not ready (qualified) to buy. Courteously thank the prospect for their time; stay in touch; but spend your limited time resources with those who ARE ready (qualified) to buy.
- There are two categories of disqualified prospects. Those not qualified to buy right now and those who will never be qualified to buy. Keep in regular touch (top-of-mind) with the former. When they finally need what you sell, who do you think they are going to call?
- Selling is a profession, not a vocation of last resort. Never take a job selling because you cannot find another job. The odds of success are against you, your employer and your target audience.
- Those who populate your target market (prospects and customers) need you to be a savvy, educated, experienced, alert, well-connected, proactive, selfless and an objective advisor, who places their needs first.
- You can only be all these things to your prospects and customers if they allow you to sell profitably and show you reciprocal respect.
- To hire your selling talents, drive and dedication an employer must be willing to compensate you with a respectable, competitive salary. Commissions are for bounty hunters. Prospects and customers distrust and avoid bounty hunters.
- Courtesy is everything. Therefore leave you sales pitches, gift of gab, cold-calls, desperation to close, hunger, insincerity and self-service at the curb.
- Lives depend on you. You are a professional. Selling is a profession and a practice … no less than law, medicine, dentistry, accounting, engineering, teaching, or rocket-science.