Training: Integrating Subsconscious and Conscious Sales Techniques
Sales is not a discrete part of doing business, it is integrated into everything you do from casual conversation to working on the details of a big job. Those conversations and that attention to detail send an on-going message to your market about you and how you do business. That message has a direct and powerful effect on how easy it is to sell your product.
This integration of selling into every aspect of your business can be handled in two ways. You can pretend its not happening and continue as you have, letting your work speak for itself. We’ll call this subconscious selling since your conscious mind has decided to leave sales to the subconscious. The other way is to develop an awareness of the sales component in everything you do and work to improve it. This conscious approach means putting the importance of selling up there with the ‘real’ work you do.
Subconscious Selling
Subconscious selling is not necessarily a bad thing. If you harbor deep seated prejudices about the propriety of tooting your own horn in public or merely feel a distaste for sales then subconscious selling may be your only choice. The problem with choosing to say: I am not a salesperson, I’m a __________.(fill in your occupation) is that you still need to sell to survive but you’ve relegated this important survival skill to a part of you that isn’t always under control. The result may be lost opportunities or inappropriate sales pitches at the wrong times.
These prejudices and fears regarding sales are common but often groundless, being based more in our upbringing than any real experience. Coping with them by ignoring them may mean missing out on what is really a fascinating aspect of being self-employed. Learning to sell is an incredibly useful skill, one that you can carry to any job, in any location, under any circumstances. Because sales is really the study of human nature and the way we communicate, it is a subject that, if embraced, can be very enlightening.
Conscious Selling
To experience this ‘enlightenment’ you need to consciously make the decision to learn sales as a challenging skill. This includes activities like reading books and articles about it, attending and participating in training sessions, observing the sales process as practiced by others and, overall, taking a real interest in the process.
Learning a skill is different than learning information or facts. We learn skills through hands-on experience combined with teaching. Skill learning is a truly interactive process because humans don’t just learn on an intellectual basis, we learn physically. Our bodies learn how certain activities feel, smell, sound and look as we participate in them. For instance, watching an Olympic competition has much more meaning for us if we have actually tried the sport we’re watching, no matter how inept we may have been in the process. Sales is no different. Once you have consciously tried selling, going through each step and responding to the customer, your entire perception of how we interact and engage in transactions will change. You consciousness of this aspect of human nature will be altered.
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