“I don’t like to do sales-related jobs”.
Very often I heard this from my candidates. And I always feel how good it would be if they were open up to picking up sales skills.
Many people do not realize, selling is actually a prerequisite in life.
If you’re a CEO in an organization, you’re selling the services of your business.
If you are going for an interview, you’re selling your values.
When you’re interacting with customers, you’re doing sales.
Admit it or not, no matter what profession you are in, employers are always looking for someone with the combination of sales skill sets.
Selling is all about convincing and negotiating. Your ideas won’t go anywhere if you can’t sell them to the right people. You can’t get a good price without good negotiation skills with buyers. There are many job seekers claiming they cannot get a job. In fact, if you know how to sell yourself, you should be able to land a job. Likewise, for many start-ups blaming they couldn’t raise the capital, but if you have a great idea, you should be able to sell the idea.
In fact, we all need to apply good sales skills in our life and sales skills can be trained. Sales skill always comes with good business development (BD) skill. Sales is :
- Identifying someone’s problem and providing a solution.
- Referring resources to someone. If you can’t provide a solution, refer them to others. Helping people is BD and good BD will bring in sales. It might not be an instant thing, but it will create the impact eventually.
- Doing the best at your work and getting recognized. People will engage your service when they need it.
Selling is not begging customers, or entertaining customers. Instead, a successful business deal requires listening, understanding, and solving. Some good sales people could be introverts. Selling is not a scary thing.
Overall, if you can develop sales and business development skills in any profession, your career advancement progress is already half-won.
