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The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the funny thing is, you’re a salesman, and you don’t know that. —ARTHUR MILLER,
And you’ll see why actually believing in what you’re selling has become essential on sales’ new terrain.
Make it personal and make it purposeful.
The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and our happiness.
potential customers typically initiate the relationship themselves by downloading a trial version of one of the company’s products.
Instead, they simply help people understand the software, knowing that the value and elegance of their assistance can move wavering buyers to make a purchase.
It also requires discovering customers’ needs, understanding how the products are used, and building something so unique and exciting that
someone will be moved to buy.
“We try to espouse the philosophy that everyone the customer touches is effectively a salespe...
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They’re out in the field, interacting directly with customers and making sure the product is meeting their needs.
They can tackle the customer’s problems on the spot—and, most important, begin to identify new problems the client might not know it has.
A world of flat organizations and tumultuous business conditions—and that’s our world—punishes fixed skills and prizes elastic ones.
What an individual does day to day on the job now must stretch across functional boundaries.
And when the next technologies emerge and current business models collapse, those skills will need to stretch...
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“As teachers, we want to move people,”
Education and health care are realms we often associate with caring, helping, and other softer virtues, but they have more in common with the sharp-edged world of selling than we realize.
To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person,
but to leave him better off ...
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“is that to move people a large distance and for the long term, we have to create the conditions where they can move themselves.”
“agitation is challenging them to do something that they want to do.”
“It’s about leading with my ears instead of my mouth,” Ferlazzo says. “It means trying to elicit from people what their goals are for themselves and having the flexibility to frame what we do in that context.”
Ferlazzo told John that he wanted him to graduate, too, but that graduation was unlikely if he couldn’t write an essay. “I then told him that I knew from previous conversations that he was on the football team and liked football,” Ferlazzo said. “I asked him what his favorite football team was. He looked a little taken aback since it seemed off topic—it looked like he had been expecting a lecture. ‘The Raiders,’ he replied. Okay, then, what was his least favorite team? ‘The Giants.’”
the ability to influence, to persuade, and to change behavior while striking a balance between what others want and what you can provide them.
“I don’t think so, but you have to ask my husband.”
“Well, when do you think you might start looking at a new car?”
When buyers can know more than sellers, sellers are no longer protectors and purveyors of information. They’re the curators and clarifiers of it—helping to make sense of the blizzard of facts, data, and options. “If a customer has any question at all,” Darvish told me, “I can say, ‘Let’s go to Chevy.com’” and figure out the answer together.
