Why You Need to be Better at Sales

Most people in any industrialized nation are employed. That is, they’ve applied for jobs, received an offer for one or more, accepted one, and now perform a relatively well-scoped set of tasks in exchange for a regular paycheck and accompanying benefits.

I too have a job, but I don’t think of myself as an “employee.” I’d like to encourage you to not do so either, and I’ll try and explain why.

To get there, I’d like you to think about a service that you currently pay for, or perhaps one you’ve considered paying for. This could be as simple as “getting a haircut,” or “taking care of my home’s landscaping,” or even “fixing the broken kitchen faucet.” These are engagements in which you pay money in exchange another person performing the service.

Paying someone for a service doesn’t mean you can’t do that service yourself. It might simply mean you don’t have time, or that you know an experienced professional will do the job more quickly or effectively.

Start thinking of yourself as a service provider.

Just because your employer has you working full days doesn’t mean you’re not a service provider. You might not be a contractor in the legal sense, but you’re still very much a service provider. Your employer pays you money, and in exchange you perform various services for them. Likely, your employer could find someone else to perform those services, just as you could hire one plumber over another.

Which leads us to the headline of this article: What would make you hire one plumber over another, assuming they both had similar availability?

Sales.

In most cases, we make decisions based on elements of sales—marketing, advertising, and so forth. We might look at the two plumbers’ websites and see which one had more information. Or we might look at a reviews website and see which one had better ratings and comments.

In the world of employment, your LinkedIn profile is perhaps the best example of a website, online profile, and reviews website you can use. Oh, you can certainly do more, but a LinkedIn profile should be the starting place. There are TONS of people who offer advice on making a better LinkedIn profile, and so I’m not going to go down that path. Instead, let’s keep this higher-level.

• Can you describe—in 1–2 concise sentences—the problem that you solve? That is, what service do you provide, and how does that service help a company? “When people experience water leaks or faulty water fixtures, I repair those quickly and according to all applicable codes and standards.”
• Do you seek out recommendations (“product reviews”) from the people you work with? Do you also seek out ones that may be critical, and use those to evaluate your service offering?
• Are you comfortable speaking about the value you bring to your customers (employer)? That is, are you able to do so without feeling embarrassed? Can you speak about your successes without feeling like you’re bragging? Can you, in short, sell yourself?

I’m not suggesting these things are trivial—but they are IMPORTANT. Selling yourself actually requires you to stop thinking about you, and to start thinking about your customer (employers, even potential future ones). McDonald’s doesn’t do the commercials they do because it makes them feel good—they run them because, through research and testing, they’ve found that those commercials make customers feel good. Selling is about switching to the customer’s point of view, and speaking to it.

Whether you’re writing a LinkedIn profile, a resume, or even a social media post, think about who you want to read it. If you were an employer, which of these one-sentence previews would be more interesting to you?

• “I’ve been laid off and am in need of a job.”
• “I’m now available to help with cloud migrations, application refactoring, and digital transformation projects.”

See the difference? One of them is about the poster, and the other is about the reader. The first one is sharing, the second one is selling. Selling requires you to learn a little bit about what potential customers care about, so that you can then speak to those cares.

So are you up for it? Can you sell yourself?