Resilience against endless rejection
Rejection is the normal condition of selling, not an occasional setback. Success depends on persevering through repeated failure without losing the will to keep trying.
Business
Payment is more than money
In any exchange, currency includes goodwill, affirmation, guidance, and approval, not just cash. Sellers who grasp this can offer and receive value that never appears on a receipt.
Honest selling means serving others
If your aim in selling is the same as in the rest of your life, to respect people and do the best for them, you stop having to play a salesperson. Selling then becomes consistent with who you are rather than a mask you wear.
Everyone is always selling
Selling is not confined to closing deals: convincing someone of an argument, landing a job, attracting a partner, or getting a child to eat vegetables all use the same skill. Persuasion is the everyday means by which people get their way in the world, so sales skills are useful to everyone, not just professionals.
Selling is business's neglected core
A business that cannot sell its product will not survive, and more Americans work in sales than in manufacturing, marketing, or finance. Yet elite business schools offered no courses on it, leaving the best-educated managers ignorant of one of commerce's most vital functions.
No fifteen-minute shortcut to mastery
Great selling is a craft built through hard work, creativity, attentiveness, and selflessness, not a bag of tips and tricks. Anyone promising to make you a great salesperson in minutes is either a charlatan or a fool.
Sellers must believe their pitch
Effective sellers can sincerely believe in whatever they are selling, which makes them persuasive. The same capacity lets them convince themselves of things that aren't true, which is how good salespeople end up knowingly pushing bad products.
Selling can work like religion
The most successful selling goes beyond a transaction to inspire faith in customers. It can even create a sense of duty to buy, the way belief creates obligations for the faithful.
Buyers favor sellers who flatter them
People often buy to please the seller rather than on the merits of the product. Doctors, for instance, bought and prescribed more drugs for attractive former cheerleaders than for salespeople who resembled themselves, a lever companies deliberately exploit.
Selling exposes your true self
Having to sell forces you to confront what you are willing to do for money. It shows how you reshape yourself for different people and purposes, and how far you blur the personal and the commercial.