Why Selling (Helping) Is Critical To Your Success and Three Keys To Becoming A Master “Salesperson”

I have educational programs that I believe in and that I feel are very important for people, so I make offers. I make offers in my classes for my other classes.

I’ll make a strong offer; very attractive, give everyone a great deal, tell all the good things about the program, and just do what I can to help people make a decision because I think it will be great for them.

People come up to me all the time saying, “Harv, you are such a good salesperson.” Do you know what? I don’t like that word.

I don’t even like to be called a good salesperson because I don’t think of myself as selling. I think of myself as informing people and trying to persuade them because I think it will be awesome for them.

You’d be surprised at how many people still feel guilty for making an offer to someone to provide a service for money.

Speaking for myself, I know I didn’t physically drag or force anybody to come to my classroom. If they want help in becoming a master at marketing, for example, and I have a program that’s going to help them become a master at marketing [see my web class below, by the way, if this is something you are interested in], why wouldn’t I want to adamantly press on that and say, “Do this program too, the more learning the better”?

If you’re not going to petition for yourself, for your ability to have something to offer that other people want to buy–and you know would benefit them greatly–then who will petition for you? The only way you’re going to do that is to get good at selling, which we’ll call it for simplicity sake, keeping in mind we actually don’t like that word. Call it whatever you need to.

I wasn’t always good at sales, you know. When I first started trying to make some money for myself after I left college, got kicked out of the house, and needed to make rent, I did the standard encyclopedia sales, the standard vacuum cleaner sales, and the standard life insurance sales. You couldn’t get more standard than that.

I sucked at all three of them. I couldn’t make a dollar. I felt terrible about it. I hated knocking on people’s doors. I hated cold calling. I hated trying to convince people who didn’t want to be sold that they should buy this product. I can still feel those feelings writing about it now.

How on Earth did I go from someone who couldn’t stand sales to someone who stands up on a stage in front of 5,000 people and will just ramble on for half an hour about how great this program is and why you have to take it?

It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t like selling; I just don’t like cold selling. I don’t like picking up the phone and calling people who don’t know me and trying to sell them something. I don’t like knocking on doors, but there are some people who do. To each their own.

When I’m on stage, though, and I’m making offers to groups, I don’t think of it as selling. I think of it as helping people make a decision that’s going to change their life because I really believe in the programs.

Also, I happen to be a multimillionaire doing this. Why wouldn’t you take the program and learn from me?

The point here isn’t to toot my own horn. The point is that this is how I learned to approach sales in my teaching career; the same principles I applied when I first started to become a successful businessperson. It’s as simple as these three things:

1. You have to really believe in what you’re selling. The number one key to doing well in marketing or selling is conviction.

2. You are making an offer they can’t refuse, not selling. Yes, you are actually selling, but if you’re doing it with conviction, then it won’t come across as a sell. You are simply making an irresistible offer.

3. What is your selling style? Maybe you don’t resonate with one-on-one selling. Find out your way of marketing that resonates with you that you feel good about and feel comfortable with. Don’t market in ways you don’t feel comfortable with because it’s not going to work. Do things that you do like and it will work.

This is my take on the keys to good selling; to get good at sales requires experience, and expert mentorship never hurts…