Selling in Dallas

The rats at "The Notes from the Lab" put me on to today's 'The Connection' from NPR...

The hot issue had Larry Lessig talking about the Supreme Court case that is currently at hand right now. With the full guarantee of court costs picked up by Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, I checked out his blog, 'Blog Maverick' today, and I picked up some great advice from a post in February called 'Get a Job'. I thought he had some great points on selling...Check it out.

Here are some strong points from Cuban:

• "I don’t remember who told me that selling was a job for a lifetime, but they were right."
• "Let me be clear that it’s not the person who can talk someone into anything. It’s not the hustler who is a smooth talker. The best salespeople are the ones who put themselves in their customer’s shoes and provide a solution that makes the customer happy."
• "The best salesperson is the one the customer trusts and never has to question."
• "The best salesperson is the one who knows that with every cold call made, they are closer to helping someone."
• "The best salesperson is the one who takes immense satisfaction from the satisfaction their customer gets."
• "The best salesperson is the one who wakes up early every morning excited to come to the office and get on the phone and let people know exactly why they love their product, their job and their clients."

Sound corny from him, and is it too simple for you? Well, it definitely worked for him. He started out selling components in Radio Shack and bartending in Dallas before he started Broadcast.com.

• "It’s also the most important job in every company. There has yet to be a successful company that has survived with zero sales."

Here's two great questions from him...

• "So if selling is the most important job in a company, why do fewer and fewer people seem to be wanting the job?"
• "Why aren’t their many colleges offering majors in “Salesmanship”, not Sales and Marketing. Just pure, old fashioned selling?"

Because people are scared to get out and put their face on the line of rejection. Also, sales takes getting related to someone. That's awfully hard for people to do because they stay tight in their little circles...Man, I can't believe that I didn't think sales would take me anywhere.

• "If you don’t have a job, or don’t have the job you want, get a job in sales. Every single person on this planet can learn to be a great salesperson. All you have to do is put in the effort and care about your company, your prospects and customers."
  

Man, I can't wait to get this thesis done to start selling again...

Good Selling,
IronDog