SELLING IS A PREREQUISITE FOR LIFE Selling impacts every person on this planet. Your ability or inability to sell, persuade, negotiate, and convince others will affect every area of your life and will determine how well you survive. No matter what your title or position is in life, or what your role is in a company or on a team, you will at some point have to convince others of something. Selling is used every day by every person on this planet. No one is excluded. Selling is not just a job or a career; selling is essential to the survival and well-being of every living individual. Your ability to do well in life depends on your ability to sell others on the things in which you believe! You need to know how to negotiate and how to get agreement from others. The ability to get others to like you, work with you, and want to please you determines how well you will survive.
Selling is not just a job—selling is a way of life! Selling (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary): The action of persuading or influencing another to a course of action or to the acceptance of something. Who does this not affect? When I say “selling,” I’m talking about anything having to do with convincing, persuading, negotiating, or just getting your way. This could include debating, getting along with others, exchanging goods or services, convincing a girl to go out with you, buying or selling a home, convincing the bank to give you a loan, starting your own business, persuading others to support your ideas, or getting a customer to buy a product from you. It is said that the number one reason a business or an individual fails is undercapitalization.
Not so! The truth is, businesses fail first and foremost because their ideas weren’t sold quickly enough and in quantities great enough, and therefore they ran out of money. No business owner can build a business without understanding this critical element called selling! Think of any action in life, and I assure you that there’s someone at one end or the other trying to influence the outcome. An example: A golfer has a six-foot putt. He putts the ball and then does everything he can to persuade that ball to go into the hole. He talks to it, he pleads with it, he makes motions with his hands, and he might even whisper a little prayer that the ball will drop.
All the while, his opponent stands across from him and does the exact opposite. This example demonstrates that every one of us is always trying to influence a certain outcome. The degree to which you can influence the outcome of events in your life is the determining factor of your success. Those individuals who don’t want to trust their fate to pleading, wishing, praying, and hoping must learn to persuade, convince, and negotiate successfully. No matter who you are or what you do, you’re selling something. It doesn’t matter whether or not you call yourself a salesperson because you’re either selling something or someone is selling you.
Either way, one of the parties is going to influence the outcome, and it will either be you getting your way or the other guy getting his way. A sale is made in every exchange of ideas or communication—there are no exceptions. Deny it if you will, but that won’t change the facts. You’re a salesperson, and you’re one every single day of your life. From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, I assure you that you’re trying to get your way. The fact that you don’t have the title “salesperson” or that you aren’t being paid a commission is only a technical issue. You’re still a salesperson—and commissions come in many forms.
Speaking of commissions: Every time you get your way, you’ve just been paid a commission. Not all payments are monetary. Some of the greatest achievements I’ve had in my life had nothing to do with money. Recognition for a job well done is a commission. A raise or a promotion at work is a commission. Gaining new friends is an incredible commission. Getting votes for a project you’re pushing forward is a commission. I find it comical when people tell me, “I could never be a salesperson because I could never work on commission.” I’m like, “What do you mean? Your entire life is a commission.
There’s no salary guaranteed in life. The whole world is on commission and the whole world is required to sell!” It’s been said that the best things in life are free, but I don’t agree with that. The best things in life are those that come in the form of a commission for some extra, well-done effort! Happiness, security, safety, a great home, a great family, love, confidence, friends, your church, your community, and on and on—are all commissions for someone’s hard work at selling others on a better way of life. True love, the ultimate commission, is earned by those who find the right partner, take care of him or her, continue to create the relationship, and keep it growing.
There’s no guarantee that a relationship will get you love. First, you’ve got to persuade the person to take an interest in you. Then you have to find out what they want and what makes them happy. Then you have to produce it and keep producing it. But somewhere along the line, you have to sell the other person on the idea that you’re the one that he or she can trust to create a life with. If you succeed and exceed the person’s expectations, you will get the commission of love. Health is not guaranteed in life. Health is a commission for taking care of yourself and your mind. When a person successfully sells himself on eating right, working out, and taking care of his attitude, he gets a commission of having good health.
The great benefit of children is also a commission of sorts and is not guaranteed to every marriage. You still have to convince your partner to have sex with you, and even marriage doesn’t guarantee you sex. If you can’t close your partner on wanting to have sex with you, then you won’t get the great commission of children. Once you have the kids, you have to continue to sell. Concepts such as discipline, work ethic, education, good manners, and homework all have to be sold.
If you don’t do the selling, they will sell you. Kids are the best salespeople on the planet. They’re passionate, relentless, and persistent closers, able to break down their parents’ resistance until they get what they want! The point is, selling is about life, and every area of life involves selling. The more consistently you can win at selling, the more commissions you’ll get rewarded in life! So get it! Everyone on this planet is involved in sales. There are no exceptions to this law. You’re involved in selling almost every minute of every day.
If this is somehow distasteful to you, then you have some misunderstandings about selling. When I say “selling,” do you think of a fast-talking swindler who can sell anything to anyone? Maybe you immediately get a picture of some guy who’s a confrontational, high-pressure type? Both of these images are negative extremes of selling and in no way describe the skills of a true salesperson. Confrontation and pressure are attributes of the amateur who doesn’t understand sales and ends up resorting to unpleasant tactics. When I discuss sales in this book, not only am I referring to the professional, paid salesperson, but I’m also covering the everyday use of basic persuasion skills and how to use them to get your way in life.