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Rediscovering Our Passion For Selling

 

Guest articles > Rediscovering Our Passion For Selling

 

by: Jon Gilge

Can you remember your first job in sales?

Your first sales call?

The first sale you ever made?

Can you still remember how it felt- as if it were just yesterday-despite the years or even decades that may have since passed?

I will admit that I had almost forgotten. For some time I had failed to remember just how good it felt in that first moment when I fully realized that I was starting an opportunity with unlimited potential. One where I was the engine of my success, the one who determined my own pay by my own effort, and the one who could give me a raise anytime I asked in exchange for a little improvement and some extra effort.

That was an incredible feeling which even when I think about it now, from the distance of many years, it makes me feel fortunate that I took that first opportunity to join the profession of selling, and that I made the career that I have from it.

But something happened along the way, between the start of that first opportunity and where I am today, that made me loose sight of the unique opportunity represented by a career in selling. Not completely and not all the time, but often enough that I no longer had the same bright enthusiasm that I started with. I suspect that I am not unique in this. I had lost track of the larger context, of the infinite possibilities that selling offers, and instead found myself dwelling too often on the daily grind. My perspective had changed from the large picture exuberance of those early days when the grind was only a minor detail along the way to the outstanding outcomes that selling afforded, to a much narrowed view where the large picture became the minor detail and the unpleasant details the primary focus.

I was reminded of all those things I had forgotten and the perspective I had lost in small pieces along the way this past week when I had the opportunity to teach a sales seminar to what was at the time the newest direct sales team in the country.

Let me explain.

The group I had the privileged of teaching, was until the day before, a group of order-takers. I say that as a compliment, as their skill and dedication merits, and without a hint of the usual low regard that salespeople assign to anyone who takes orders rather than sells orders.

But starting on that day they were no longer order takers. The company had just announced that their phone representatives would now be compensated on sales performance rather than for the time they spent on the phone taking orders. In that instant they all had become professional salespeople, a role that they had never intended, and one that they were mostly unfamiliar with.

This is not the usual audience for my training. I most commonly work with groups that challenge me to resolve the old conflict between old dogs and new tricks and not with those that are receiving their very first introduction to selling.

My preparation for this session, to be held over two days on location in the heart of rural Kansas, brought me back to those original feelings that I had about selling when it was first introduced to me. This was a place my mind had not been in some time, and that was what was missing from my own relationship will selling.

Through the first look at professional selling from the perspective of those eager and receptive students I was able to see again, as if for the first time, all of the joy that selling had for me when I first started– The feeling of empowerment and control over my own future, the smoldering possibilities that I could come to realize through my own effort and development, the prospect of making an extraordinary income and being successful and respected by helping other people solve their problems with my product.

Through their eyes I was able to see beyond the short term difficulties that accompany any career in selling and again see that big picture, because in their inexperience there only was a big picture. Like me, at some point they will learn of the challenges of the day to day grind of professional selling, but if they can keep their focus on that big picture, on the outcomes and possibilities, on the goals and motivations, then they will be able to keep the short term travails in the proper perspective. They will be able to see them merely as obstacles along the path to success that present opportunities to grow, and the events that mark the progress toward the ultimate objective of earning a tremendous income by being of equally tremendous service to those who come to them seeking solutions.

As I told them in parting, ‘now that you are paid what you are worth, and can always learn to be worth more by being better, you can now really start to dream about the possibilities that life can have for you.’ As experienced salespeople, who all to some degree have been troubled by the small frustrations of selling and forgotten some of the reasons that made us fall in love with selling in the first place, we need to remember that this profession truly allows us to dream of better things, and shows us the way to make them happen.

My sincere appreciation for the lessons learned from my friends in Kansas, and may we all be reminded by their perspective of the possibilities, excitement and joy in the profession of selling.

 


The Sales Giant is the publisher of the popular Sales Giant Training Blog (www.salesgianttraining.com/blog)  and the author of the FREE 'Master Closing Guide' that you can download instantly at www.salesgianttraining.com/free-master-closing-guide. For more information on all of the sales training resources they offer, please visit them at their online home at www.salesgianttraining.com.


Contributor: Jon Gilge

Published here on: 03-Apr-11

Classification: Sales, Psychology

Website: www.salesgianttraining.com

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Site Menu

| Home | Top | Quick Links | Settings |

Main sections: | Disciplines | Techniques | Principles | Explanations | Theories |

Other sections: | Blog! | Quotes | Guest articles | Analysis | Books | Help |

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Settings: | Computer layout | Mobile layout | Small font | Medium font | Large font | Translate |

 

 

Please help and share:

 

Quick links

Disciplines

* Argument
* Brand management
* Change Management
* Coaching
* Communication
* Counseling
* Game Design
* Human Resources
* Job-finding
* Leadership
* Marketing
* Politics
* Propaganda
* Rhetoric
* Negotiation
* Psychoanalysis
* Sales
* Sociology
* Storytelling
* Teaching
* Warfare
* Workplace design

Techniques

* Assertiveness
* Body language
* Change techniques
* Closing techniques
* Conversation
* Confidence tricks
* Conversion
* Creative techniques
* General techniques
* Happiness
* Hypnotism
* Interrogation
* Language
* Listening
* Negotiation tactics
* Objection handling
* Propaganda
* Problem-solving
* Public speaking
* Questioning
* Using repetition
* Resisting persuasion
* Self-development
* Sequential requests
* Storytelling
* Stress Management
* Tipping
* Using humor
* Willpower

Principles

+ Principles

Explanations

* Behaviors
* Beliefs
* Brain stuff
* Conditioning
* Coping Mechanisms
* Critical Theory
* Culture
* Decisions
* Emotions
* Evolution
* Gender
* Games
* Groups
* Habit
* Identity
* Learning
* Meaning
* Memory
* Motivation
* Models
* Needs
* Personality
* Power
* Preferences
* Research
* Relationships
* SIFT Model
* Social Research
* Stress
* Trust
* Values

Theories

* Alphabetic list
* Theory types

And

About
Guest Articles
Blog!
Books
Changes
Contact
Guestbook
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Students
Webmasters

 

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