It’s time for sales to come out of the dinosaur age and move onto the modern era of serving.

I remember when I first started to learn about selling. I had not long left my graduate accountancy job working for Unilever and had taken my first direct sales job in London working for an office supplies company.

My sales manager was a rising star in the company and told me the best way to learn was to just “get out there and knock ‘em dead!”

I had no idea what I was doing. I’d had one week of training in product knowledge and was now on my own with a product brochure that weighed a ton and a set of car keys to a red Nissan Sunny. That was it. No list of contacts, no direction to head in, and no idea what to say to a prospect when I got one. I’d never felt so useless, unprepared, and scared.

How did things go? Well, let's put it this way. I hated it so much, I’d spend more time driving across London looking for traffic jams to get stuck in, rather than go door to door knocking, calling on businesses cold, or facing a customer.

I dreaded each day. I’d fight with myself to get out of bed to start my pain all over again. This was my job, my career. I had to do something.

So I started borrowing books and cassette tapes (for those of you who were born after 1990, they were the equivalent of today's ‘downloaded music) from the local library so I could listen to them in the car and dedicated each and every drive to learning everything I could from the ‘old pros!’

However, I was starting to feel more and more like those used car salesmen you see in those 1970s movies. I was being taught to use those hardcore sales tactics, to push them into a corner until they said yes, to keep pushing and pushing until I got a yes. It was horrible.

But as much as I hated how bad it made me feel, and more importantly how horrible it made my prospects feel, it was the only way I knew that was working back then.

Over the next few years, and multiple positions in all different sectors and industries, I managed to define a system that not only sold with great success but made my prospects feel good about meeting me and taking the next step.

This has now evolved into my ‘No Stress Selling System’ that I use every day in my own business and have taught my clients around the world this framework to get the highest level of success in the most efficient way possible.

If today, you feel anything like the way I used to feel about selling, then the chances are that you've been taught the old way and using outdated, hard closing, manipulative, pressurised selling techniques that just leave you and your prospect feeling sick and yucky.

The old way of selling is dead. It’s time to put our clients' needs first rather than our own. It’s time for sales to come out of the dinosaur age and move onto the modern era of serving.

Selling is serving. It should make you feel great to be on a sales call with a prospect in today’s world, not scared and nauseous.

Hope that helps guys if you’re struggling to close your prospects into paying clients.

Gary.

#sales #training #business