Southwestern Sales Talk

Flip a coin.  Flip it again.  And flip it 15 times after that.  What are the chances that it landed on heads all 17 times?  Slim to none, I’d guess. 

Just as with the coin, sales is a numbers game.  It is 100% guaranteed that you will experience both the winning, and the losing, sides of the coin.  You will hear customers say ‘yes!’ to your product and you will also hear customers tell you that your product is rubbish and, ‘no, I’m not buying’.

Matter of fact, you will likely hear the latter more often than you will hear the former.   This is not bad news; it simply is the way it is.  But how bland would your job be if you heard ‘yes’ all the time?  The reason making a sale feels so good is because you know that we’ve worked for it.  You put the time and energy into it, and you earned that sale.  Hearing nothing but ‘yes’ would take the excitement away.  Just like it wouldn’t be much fun flipping that coin if it always landed on heads.   You will hear a ‘yes’ eventually… if you are willing to stick around long enough and see it through.   It is statistically impossible for you to go at it day after day, time after time, try after try, and not make a sale.  It may take a day or a week or a month, but it will happen.  It’s got to happen. 

Colonel Sanders drove around the US for two years trying to sell his chicken recipe.  He was turned down 1,009 times.  Talk about believing in the numbers!

The people who excel in this world are not the lucky or the smart or the naturally gifted.  They are the patient, the persistent, and the tenacious.  They are the ones that got back up after they’d been chewed up and spit out. 

So get used to the word ‘no’.  Expect, embrace it, and learn to enjoy it.   Because that ‘no’ means that you are now one ‘no’ closer to your long-awaited YES.  

 

Haley Price sold books for three summers (2003-2005).  She is the author and illustrator of Today is the Best Day of My Life.  This book contains bite-sized life principles, presented in a light and simple way, that are intended to help guide people toward a more productive, more meaningful, and more fun life.  She tailored a version of this book specifically towards Southwestern students, and it was used for the first time in their sales kits in the summer of 2009.  While not writing, Haley works in global advertising sales for Microsoft in New York, NY.

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