What is Selling?

Selling is nothing but the transfer of enthusiasm from the seller to the buyer. Supposing you became as enthusiastic about my product as I am, you would end up buying it, wouldn't you? If I am not enthusiastic abut my own product, I have no right to sell it. Which means, if I am not passionate about my own product, why should anyone else be? How can I sell it? Do I have a right to sell it?

A salesperson while selling grocery was referring to everyting he sold as one, 2 or 3 pounds of enthusiasm etc. Thy buyer asked 'When I buy 2 pounds of carrots why fo you refer to it as 2 pounds of enthusiasm?' The salesperson replied, 'Whenever anyone buys anything from the store I always put in 200% of enthusiasm behind it.'

What this illustrates is that a good salesperson should have strong belied in his product. Strong belief means that under the same set of circumstances, if the salesperson would not buy his own product, he certainly has no right to sell it to anyone. If under the same circumstances, a doctor would not prescribe a medicine to his own children, he has no right to prescribe it to other people. If he does, he is cheating people,, If yousell something that you  don't believe in :

1. You are bot a good professional.
2. You are cheating people.
3. People sense it instinctively and get a feeling of discomfort.

Selling is 90% conviction and 10% communication of the conviction :

Suppose,
You joined "American Life Insurance". You have to sell small policies of face values of $5000 or $10000. You have to hear the top producers in the industry talking big sales. And such a professional is like this -

"You can never convince a client to buy a million dollar policy unless you own one. Supposing you died, how much insurance would your family need for food, clothing, shelter, children education etc. in order to survive?"

If your answer is - 50 million dollars,

"Then why don't you own a million dollar policy yourself? If you don't own it yourself, you have no right to sell it to anyone, because you have no conviction."

It might be happened that after sometimes you started selling policies of face values of $500,000 to $1 million with as much comfort and wase as I used to sell $10,000 policies.

Success is not measured by how we do as compared to others, but how we do as compared to what we are capable of doing. Winners compete against themselves; they better their own records constantly.

Pride in performance and the profession if selling can only come when we internalize and merge character and competence together, to create something called a great sales professional. For that we need to understand the principles of selling and he process involved. They are as follows:

1. Commitment.
2. Focus on goals
3. Acquiring competencies n selling skills
4. Creating and following a selling system
5. Putting in an organized effort
6. Giving and getting respect
7. Learning to relate to people
8. Lead generation and prospecting
9. Qualifying prospects
10. Learning to approach to build rapport
11. Building trust
12. Identifying the decision-making process and key decision-makers
13. Fac-Finding and making presentations
14. Learning to ask questions to direct the sales call
15. Uncovering the need of the customer
16. Providing solutions
17. Overcoming resistance
18. Closing a sale
19. Keeping post-sales commitments and sevice
20. Building the post-sale relationship
21. Avoiding mistakes and learning from experience
22. Learning how to stay motivated and how to handle rejections

All of the above can be classified into 3 distinct activities -

the pre-sale, the actual sale and the post-sale, and all are necessary in order to be a good professional.