353 Selling Yourself Is The First Sale You Need To Make

<p>Buyers don’t know us at first, so all they have to go on is the brand and our personality.  If the brand is a powerful selling point, great, but for many smaller companies that is not something which is going to make the sale for you.  A lot of Japanese salespeople rely on the brand. They never learn how to do sales as a professional and instead decide to transform themselves into glorified order-takers.  If you ask them to go out and find a new client, they will recoil in fear and horror because they know they cannot do it and actually have no clue where to start.  This is why salespeople need sales training and why not doing it is one of the most expensive decisions, a leader will ever make.</p> <p> A senior business executive I met recently shared that when he was younger, his company’s policy in sales was to only approach buyers who they could be introduced to by a mutual acquaintance.  What a tremendous waste.  If they had invested in some sales training, they could have been able to target all companies in their area of the industry and make a lot more sales.  Naturally, cold calling, approaching people you don’t know are all difficult, but that is the job of the salesperson.  That is why you get training. An order taker is simply not a salesperson, in my view.</p> <p> One of the dangers of trying to sell yourself to the buyer is we do too much talking.  We are keen to show our expertise and the benefits of our solution and before you know it<span lang= "EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">,</span> we are doing all the talking.  Naturally, when the buyer tells you their problem and you have a solution, you have to give them confidence that they are talking to someone who can help them. Often we are excited about the potential of our solutions to help the buyer and off we go, blah, blah, blah. </p> <p> That happened to me the other day.  I caught myself going blah, blah, blah and realised, “wait a minute buddy, you are doing all the talking here and you need to shut up right now and get them talking more”.  It is so