Author: Jon Dale
It’s a common perception that salesmen are somehow despicable and dishonest.
This is born of our cultural experience of snake oil salesmen and door-to-door spruikers using high pressure techniques. Think of carpet steamers and time-share.
We forget all the other times we spend money in exchange for goods or services – often quite excellent ones we want or need. In every case, we are buying and someone else is selling – yet we don’t think of them as salespeople or as what they do as “selling”.
Fair enough, but they are selling and we are buying.
The problems occur when you try to run a business without properly making sure your products and services are sold – in other word without selling. Selling is an important part of business – no transaction occurs without it – and without doing it properly, you are leaving your business’s success to chance.
Please, please don’t think that the quality of your product or service will shine through and that people will come and buy it because it’s excellent. The world is full of excellent products that died on the vine – Betamax video is one example.
People need to be made aware of your product, shown what it can do for them or what problems it can solve for them and why they should buy it. Then they need to be asked to make a decision – buy it or not.
Don’t panic! You don’t have to go and buy a shiny suit and get your teeth whitened! You can sell professionally without betraying your integrity and without people thinking of you in that way! (No, really, you can!)
I can’t explain it all in one short article and I’m running out of space, but have a good look at your business and ask yourself the following:
• Am I letting my market know about my products?
• Do I make sure they get to see why my products are good for them?
• Does my business engage with them, so we can exchange information and decide whether we like each other enough to do business?
• Do they get asked to decide?
Suck it in, you have to do selling – without it, nobody buys!
Jon Dale is a local Business Coach. He often meets people who will do anything rather than ask people to buy. Jon is a member and Director of Pittwater Business Limited, which exists to connect, promote and develop our businesses by networking, education and socialising."
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