I find selling to be a fulfilling and enjoyable profession.
It’s not hard to spot someone who’s “trying too hard”. That disingenuous pressure you feel whenever someone is trying to sell you on something they themselves don’t believe in creates a skin crawl kind of feeling that is unmistakable and unpleasant. Like when a politician is pushing a policy that won’t affect them, or when a sales person is overly trying to be your friend, or whenever a Maroon 5 song comes up on my Spotify feed. It’s like looking at a picture of furniture online that looks nice, but deep down you know that when it shows up it will be a plastic, made in China piece of junk, regardless of how much it looked like leather and wood in the pictures.
If you want to enjoy sales, and get fulfillment from it as a career, you need to make the first sale.
The first sale is you. You have to believe in what you sell, because the alternative is soul draining and toxic to your mental well-being. That does not mean you have to want to buy what you sell, because you may not need it right now, but you do have to KNOW that if the need was there, you would buy it. For example, I have a 3 year old truck in my driveway. Overall, I am very happy with it. That doesn’t mean I can’t sell trucks to other people. I just don’t need a truck right now. But if I know deep down that if something happened to my truck I would never buy another one, then I have no business selling trucks.
Here’s how you field test your “first sale” belief.
– Identify the precise pain or pains your product or service solves. Be specific. “saving money” or “Increasing home value” are not pains. They are benefits. You want something relatable and anchored in pain that has numbers as well as examples. For example, “On average companies lose $1400/month on wasted gas and time due to inefficient routing”. Wasting $1400 is painful. “Saving money” isn’t.
– Write down what the USP (unique selling proposition) of YOUR solution is, as compared to the marketplace and best available alternatives. It usually isn’t price (although it can be). Ask yourself what you or your company does 10% better than anyone else.
– Now put yourself in your client’s shoes. If you were experiencing THAT specific pain right now, and you could choose from all the available solutions out there, at their current price, would you pick yours? Why would you pick yours?
Once you have that in your head, write it down. Look at it every day and remind yourself that your job isn’t to convince people to buy from you, as much as it is to help those facing the problem you solve realize they have a better option than their current status quo. That’s real. Your intent becomes one of empowering your clients instead of chasing commissions. That’s fulfilling and enjoyable.