PART 1 - BUILDING TENACITY: INTRODUCTION THROUGH CLARITY OF ‘SALES’ THINKING

Learning The Art of Selling is intriguing, I wasn’t a fan of salespeople because I feel forced and often, their tenacious approach is on the aggressive side.?

Just recently, I realized there’s a more ‘humane’ approach to sales, which I am debunking at the moment.?

So a series of write-ups will be about building Sales Tenacity to make us better influencers, motivators, leaders and salespeople.?

This is something that I am actively learning, and hopefully, I can share some insights with you.

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WHAT IS TENACITY?

Being tenacious means the ability to defend one idea over another idea to lead the conversation to a desirable outcome. (x + x = yy)

I used the word, ‘defend’ because being tenacious means to be persistent and determined, and the word ‘defend’ captures it instinctively.?

It means you aren’t giving up easily to letting go of a potential closing of sales.?

Yet, being tenacious shouldn’t just be focused on the face value of what you offer,

Building Sales Tenacity should highlight the value and the promised land that you want your prospect, clients and customer to achieve.

I think that’s where you draw the line of tenacious selling —

• a. It should focus on solving deeper issues of one person/team/company
• b. It should highlight the value of what you can offer (your services, products etc)
• c. It should paint a promised land (what does the future look like when they purchase?)
• d. Close in the gaps of Potential obstacles or reasons for them to not buy or purchase. (Give flexibility in payment etc)

Now, we know this already, but what about ‘Sales’, what is it?

WHAT ARE SALES?

Well, from how I understood it — Sales is the ability to influence a person or consumer to alleviate their pain through your craft and expertise.?

On business terms, this exchange is often a trading of monetary value over to a product/service; but if you ask me, this is just the aftermath.?

On a bigger scale, a successful Sales Person should first get the buy-in and belief of an individual or group by demonstrating reliability and competence.?

Why?

Well, this is where you identify whether you get the buy-in/belief or not, this is the alignment between consumers and businesses.

Alignment is critical in every sales conversation.

I see sales as not just limited to business, but rather, it is what influences everything in life.?

• How we bring out ourselves to the world is through our style, aesthetics, and clothing. (Brand Perception)
• How we talk about things, and ideas (Brand Values)?
• How we converse, manner of humour (Brand Tone)?
• How we demonstrate our competence (Brand Reliability)

Sales, from a Personal Development perspective, is simply knowing the value we can give to people and having the ability to influence them that you are the right person to trust and believe in.?

Knowing so, Sales Tenacity is a life and business-relevant skill.

Have you ever noticed that most successful people have strong people skills and are good sales people? -- It isn't mere coincidence, it's that tenaciousness to achieve things.

It can give such an amazing head start for people to achieve their personal success if it is consistently practised — however, this requires dedication, understanding human motivation and building up knowledge.

Nobody gets better at something overnight.

You got to appreciate making mistakes and stumbling over a few words here and there since this ‘mishap’ will be your stepping stone to mastery.

Sales Tenacity can also be demonstrated negatively, meaning, through a passive-aggressive approach, being an overly-domineering salesperson, and being ‘pushy’ -- do avoid this malpractice.

I like to think of a highly competent Sales Person with high tenacity practices, ‘graceful trading’.

Well, it’s just a term I came up with, but basically, ‘graceful trading’ is when you don’t hesitate to provide the impact of the value.

Putting the client's needs first.

Give informative discussion and be abundantly in doing so — this practice demonstrates your competence and expertise to your prospect/clients, all through:

• Gracefully listening.
• Gracefully giving.
• Gracefully providing.?

Doing so, you build trust between parties, hopefully, by consistently doing this, you also start to build client/customer loyalty.?

Use the power of influence, motivation, sales personality and desire when you drive a person towards a goal — This is Sales Tenacity.

Now we have put Personal Development and Sales under one light, understanding the relevance of this critical life skill, I’ll talk more about the breaking down and the how-to approach in Part 2.

Keep on the lookout, sales is indeed an interesting craft to know and learn more about.

Above & Beyond,

Danina D.