توضیحات ای جی

BEC : Sales -AJ

Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to my commentary about sales. To my mind, sales is one of the kind of two key core elements of business. You could really say sales and marketing together, the other one being a product or service. To have a business you need a product or service that’s hopefully excellent and then you have to sell it. Without those two things all the rest of it doesn’t matter at all because there’s no business, there’s no money, nothing happens. Those two are huge and key so this is actually a very, very important topic.

We’ve talked about marketing and marketing and sales really go together, but sales is really that kind of final step where you really get people to pay their money and buy your product or buy your service. So there are lots of different sales systems. You can get books and books and books and books about how to sell, how to do the whole sales process, how to be a better salesperson and it’s not a bad idea to go and read some of those books and practice some of those skills. Because even if you’re not a salesperson in your company, if that’s not your position, you still have to learn the skill of selling.

As we already mentioned, job interviewing is basically just selling. You’re selling yourself. That’s all you’re doing. That’s all it is. You know the whole job search process, the whole career process, is nothing but selling. You’re really like a little small businessperson. You’re selling your services to a company. They pay you in the form of a paycheck and then you provide services. So if you think of it that way, you think of yourself as your own little business of one, then you’ll realize that you have to be selling.

You always have to be selling. You have to certainly be selling during the job search process when you’re trying to get a new customer, a new company to hire you, but you also, ideally, will be selling during your whole career as part of your job. You might need to sell new ideas, for example, to your boss or to your teammates.

Hopefully, if you’re really trying to build your career you’re not just doing your job duties like everybody else. Hopefully, you’re actually trying to think of new approaches, new things to try, innovations, ways to save money, ways to make money, ways to improve things. Most people resist things that are different and new, so you’re going to need to persuade them to try your new idea. So that’s selling. It’s all it is, is selling. You have to sell your idea to them.

If you want to get a promotion, if you want to get more money, a better job, a more enjoyable job, then you’re going to have to sell. You’re going to have to sell yourself, again, to your boss, to your coworkers, to the boss of another department, but you really have to be able to present yourself well and sell yourself.

Then if you’re dealing with customers at all then you’re certainly representing your company again, as a salesperson. You might not work on a commission, but you are still representing the company and, again, you need to learn to be more persuasive. I mean this is a skill that’s useful in lots of things not just your career. The more you can be persuasive, the more you can sell your ideas, the more influence you have in your life, in general, in any area. It could be in a hobby. It could be with your family. There are lots of different areas. It’s a really important skill.

A lot of people think oh, I can’t sell. I can’t sell. I’m not good at selling. I don’t like selling.

Selling is scary. Selling is bad. They have all these ideas in their head about selling, again, based on the stereotype, based on the kind of old idea of this person who’s very high pressure, possibly not honest, but the truth is you can actually be an excellent salesperson and I had the same experience. If I worked at a job and I was supposed to sell something that I didn’t believe in and I wasn’t passionate about it yeah, then it felt really tough and difficult.

On the other hand, if you’re truly passionate about something, you really love it, you really care about it it’s really easy to sell. You do it all the time already in your life. You can imagine, for example, your favorite music, your favorite musician or your favorite band. So let’s imagine. I love Led Zeppelin, for example. I love their music so it’s really easy for me to sell Led Zeppelin to my friends. Imagine I meet someone and they say oh, I’ve never heard of Led Zeppelin. I don’t know their music at all.

Well, because I’m passionate about it and I really love it, it’s really easy for me to talk about Led Zeppelin and to make Led Zeppelin’s music sound fantastic. I’d say oh, it’s awesome! Oh, my God, it’s so energetic! It’s so powerful! Oh, it’s great, on and on and on. Jimmy Page is an incredible guitarist and Robert Plant he can sing so incredibly. It’s amazing! I could talk about each of their albums. I could talk about certain songs. I could talk about the emotion. I could talk about the recordings of their live concerts, on and on and on. It would be very easy.

I wouldn’t think that I was actually selling. That wouldn’t be in my mind, I’m selling Led Zeppelin to them, but that’s exactly what I would be doing. I’d be persuading them to go listen to Led Zeppelin and, in fact, I would definitely push them to take action. I would say you’ve got to listen to Led Zeppelin I. It’s a great album. So I would push them to take an action. Go listen to that album.

I’m sure you’ve done the same thing yourself with some music that you really love or maybe a great movie that you saw. You loved it so much and you went and told family or friends you’ve got to see this movie and you really convinced them to go do it. That’s sales. That’s all it is. You’re selling.

The problem is when we get into like a corporation and we’re supposed to sell, it’s part of our job, if we’re really honest what the true problem is, is that we really don’t believe in what we’re selling. We’re not truly passionate about it. It just seems like this kind of boring product or service in this big company. Honestly, I don’t really care and I’m not really all that excited about it, but I’m supposed to sell so I’m going to try to fake it and pretend. That’s really where the problem comes in because if you were truly excited about it you wouldn’t have to force yourself. You wouldn’t need to try a lot of techniques.

It would all come very naturally.

So when I think of selling, what I might call natural selling or effortless selling since Effortless English is my company, I would kind of talk about three things. Number one, step one, is understanding, true, deep, sincere understanding, always the first step. So that means, number one, understanding what you’re selling, really understanding what it. So if it’s a product you know it. You know how to use it. You have used it. You know what its strong points are. You know what the weak points are. You know what it’s fantastic at doing and you know how it can be beneficial because you’ve tried it, you’ve used it, so you know from direct experience. So you really, truly, deeply understand your product or your service that you’re selling.

The next part of understanding - the first part, understanding - is that you truly, deeply understand the person you’re selling to. That usually means lots and lots of listening, lots and lots of asking questions. It’s the opposite of the stereotypical view of a salesperson. When we think of a salesperson we often think of someone who’s just talking, talking, talking all the time, but really the first stage is listening, listening, listening and asking lots and lots of questions.

o What do you need? o What problems are you having? o Why is that a problem? o What do you really need? o What do you really want? o What’s the outcome you want? o What’s the benefit that you need? o What problems have you had in the past with other products or services? o What problems are you worried about with our product or service? So instead of trying to push away objections, you actually ask for them and then you talk about them in an honest way. You deeply understand.

You just keep asking questions and questions, going deeper and deeper, questions about their emotions, questions about their needs, rational questions; every kind of question possible so that you develop this really deep understanding of this person, what they want and what they need. If they’re representing a company then you understand what their company or department needs, wants, desires, etc.

That’s the very first step is deep, deep, deep understanding. It has to be honest. You can’t fake it. A lot of people try to fake it, but you really need to be honest about it and really deeply care and try to understand.

The second kind of key element in natural selling is enthusiasm. So ‘enthusiasm’ means a genuine passion for what you’re selling, a genuine excitement for it. So, again, this is that example of your favorite musician, right? You’re genuinely, sincerely excited about them. You have some excited emotional connection to that music, to that song, to the album or to the movie. You’re not faking it. You’re not pretending. It’s real and so it’s very easy for you to be excited about it. It’s very easy for you to be passionate because It’s true. It’s real and so you have no problem talking about your favorite music or your favorite band. You have no problem being very persuasive about it so, again, the Led Zeppelin example. If someone says nah, nah, I don’t think I like them. I heard one of their songs, I don’t like it. That’s an objection, right? So I would have no problem saying oh, no, no, you’re wrong. Look. So you don’t like that one song, but they’ve got lots of other songs. They’re not all like that one. I could go on and I could easily deal with their objection. It would be no problem and it would be no problem for you as well for you favorite movie or song or book or whatever, so genuine enthusiasm.

Now, to develop that about a product or service you really have to believe in it. If you don’t believe in it then I recommend that you go work for a different company and sell something else because there’s no faking this. You can try to fake it and pretend. You’ll do all right, but it’s really stressful and it’s no fun.

So if you really believe that the product or service is boring or you don’t really care or, even worse, if you think it’s actually not that good and that the competitors have better products or services then go get a job with the competitor or go get a job in a different field or switch careers or something because it’s sort of pointless to try to fake this.

But, if you really deeply understand the product and you deeply understand the people you’re selling to and you really appreciate the product, you really believe wow, this can help people, this product does have some great things that can really be helpful to people that I personally believe are powerful and beneficial then you can really develop that genuine sincere enthusiasm and passion. That, more than anything else, will help you be successful in your selling.

Now, a curious thing is that sometimes we’re really shy about doing this with ourselves.

So it’s easy for us to sell our favorite music, for example, to someone else, but then when we talk about ourselves in a job interview suddenly we become all quiet and shy.

Well, you need to be enthusiastic about your own abilities. You need to be genuinely passionate about your own strengths. You need to be enthusiastic about the accomplishments and the benefits that you will bring to your job, to an employer. Let that energy and enthusiasm come out when you’re interviewing, when you’re dealing with your boss, when you’re dealing with your coworkers. Don’t be shy about that, show your enthusiasm, believe in yourself and be enthusiastic about yourself.

The final step in the kind of natural sales process is asking for action. In the conversation we called this closing. That word ‘closing’ has a bit of a feeling of pressure, you know like you’re being very aggressive and it doesn’t need to be that way, but you have to ask for an action. You have to request an action. So, again, using the music example, if I was trying to convince you, sell you the idea of Led Zeppelin, listening to Led Zeppelin, I would say now go get the first album Led Zeppelin I. It’s a classic. It’s awesome. It’s great. It’s bluesy and heavy. It’s one of their best.

I would ask you to take an action. I wouldn’t just say yeah, they’re great and then that’s all. If I was really excited I would push you a little bit or I would try to convince you to take some action - to go get an album and listen to it; to go buy one of their albums.

Well, it’s the same thing in the sales process. You do have to close the sale. You do need to get the person to take action; in other words, to buy, to hand over money and actually buy.

So if you really, really understand them genuinely, sincerely, if you are sincerely excited and enthusiastic about what you’re selling and the benefits of it and how it’s going to help this person then it should not be difficult to tell them hey, I think this is what you should get. Get this product. This is the one that’s going to help you the most. Let’s do it.

There are lots of different ways. There are whole books about how to close sales and little phrases you use. Those are all little techniques that are not super important. The main thing is that you ask for action. You close the sale. You get the person to buy.

That’s the final part. Some people are shy about it, but it’s necessary. You need to do it and if you really understand and you’re really enthusiastic asking for action soon becomes quite natural and easy.

So that’s it. That’s kind of the basic sales process. I hope that you’ll use this in your own career to sell ideas to people, to sell yourself and to benefit your career in many different ways. So get out there and sell yourself, sell your ideas and, if possible, sell your company’s products and services.

The End.