Are You Still Trying To Redefine Sales?

My mother once said that I was the last one of her sons that she thought would be a salesman. I was shy and I was smart and she felt that those attributes wouldn’t be helpful. Let’s face it. Many people associate the word “sales” with used cars, door to door hustles and even snake oil. In the 70’s, some salespeople would say they worked in “Marketing” because they wanted to lower resistance with their prospects. I owned a collection agency for 20 years and used to ‘sell’ creditors on hiring me and I’d ‘sell’ debtors on paying me, but I never called myself a salesman. I called myself a debt collector. Can you imagine preferring “debt collector” to “salesman”? No wonder I’m screwed up.

I sympathized with coworkers when our managers were trying to pump us up at a rally to fill us with enthusiasm for our product that would get us through the rejection and help us handle objections. We didn’t always feel enthusiastic. Especially, when we needed the sale. We felt pressure. Plus, our prospects often interpreted our enthusiasm as fake and resisted being sucked in.

I remember going to a networking event and telling a fellow wall flower, “I wish I was better at this.” and them replying, “Me too!” We’d then shake hands and have a conversation. Everybody’s faking it until they get real.

So, this morning, Joe Jerome shared my son’s article with me and I found myself thinking about sales, perception and his mission. Jarrod’s comments on Pete Caputa’s 8 Reasons You’ll Never Get Better at Selling are indicative of what many sales-a-phobes think. I’ve written much about Sales Tactics Causing Customers to Lie and their similarity to Hustling Con Artists. Almost two years ago, Adam Zais said that we needed to redefine the word “sales”.

Here’s the thing about “sales”. Most business owners will never scale. 80% of businesses have fewer than 4 employees and average revenues of $45,000/year. So, fixing problems with compensation, or metric driven coaching? Sorry. When you’re Owner Ollie and you’ve gotta pay the rent and feed your kids, you need a customer. You don’t want to get better at sales. You’d much rather have someone BUY from you TODAY and that’s not something you can get in a classroom or conference room. Somebody has to take you by the hand and jump over the wall with you.

As I typed this, Pete Caputa published 11 stupid mistakes. Absolutely, apropos. You probably know them already. Why? Because you hate it when people do it to you. Why do you still do them?

OK. Enough. If you’re a business owner, whether or not you ever intend to scale. If you’d like to get more customers between now and year end than you have so far this year, start here.