Selling is not tricking a customer into buying a product

Today I’ll play Agony Uncle and respond to some queries and feedback I’ve received over time.

Your tricks work

I’m sad. I’m sad because I have been misunderstood. You see, I have been excitedly told by some ardent followers of this blog that they have used “the tricks in your column and they always work.” One even equated it to dribbling a ball past the buyer when he’s not watching. (Shudder!) I’m sad because nothing could be further from the truth. My truth that is.

And my truth is that selling is not about ‘tricking” the buyer. There are no tricks. Tricks imply sleight of hand. Yet sleight of hand is intended to fool (as a pata potea conman does). And selling is anything, but. Don’t take me wrong. I’m encouraged to know the “tricks” shared work. I’m discouraged though that the intended purpose has not been achieved. The intended purpose is to allay the buyer’s fears and suspicions by being genuine and honest. The intended purpose it to be a significant part of the axis around which the buyer’s problems are resolved. In sum, the intended purpose is to help the buyer win.

Which is the one (or best) sales book I can read?

Equally, selling is not a destination, it’s a journey. A journey that will never end; you never quite arrive. You are always learning. So, you find faster ways of travelling, yes. In addition, you discover more effective ways of prospecting, yes. You even close faster, yes. But you never perfect any of these.  You never “finish” as you would, if you were pushing pen and paper. And the reason why this is so is because, you are not in charge of the problems you seek to solve-buyers are. And so you are always seeking insight into buyers’ challenges, so as to find useful solutions to them. In this context, you are in reactive mode.

Now then. if you are not in the driving seat, how do you arrive when you don’t know the destination? Which is why, I can’t help readers who ask me to refer them to the one book on sales that captures everything. Selling is not a religion, say Christianity, for which the Bible is the wherewithal.  So what to do? Keep reading this column and my blog; subscribe to sales newsletters; invest and read books and journals on sales. But most importantly, implement; try again and again. The profession of Selling, like that of Medicine, doesn’t have an expiry date. You are always learning.

I want to write for the Business Daily.

So you want to write for the Business Daily. Good for you.  First things first, though. No one will publish you when you write like this (quoted verbatim):

“Dear Kageche…

I also do have the habit of writing… if I writes about a topic can you publish in the next edition. … In today’s scenario how many leaders are there who leads his team. In any organization hope sales are the  guys who act as  brand ambassadors for the organization as well as for  the brand… Now there are other sales oriented companies which is driven by finance guys. He only knows about, how maintain the organization credit. 

Due to this organization I had seen falling in a very short time because they lose good value added partner due to their new strategies making a hard and fast rules on sales part. I had seen into like these organizations they never value their high valued  assets (Sales People).  I always think in any organization the people who generates revenue why they are not been treated fairly. Also, I hope without sales there is no job for anybody in an organization. Hope sales comes in the first row…”.

Grammar

Write grammatically if you hope to be a columnist. Next, if you wish to write for the Business Daily, or any publication for that matter, write to the Editor requesting this-it’s futile going through a columnist/contributor as myself. In the meantime, you have options. Start a blog or publish posts on LinkedIn. And if you want to write for the money, don’t; you’ll be sorely disappointed.


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