Publisher's Synopsis
When someone asks what you do, is your first response "I'm a salesperson"? If you're in almost any service business, that's not likely the case. Actually, even though I teach, train, and write about sales, it's not my answer, either. If you're like many business owners and professionals, you love providing your products and services to your customers and clients more than you like the sales part. Why is that? Is it your perception of sales that's holding you back? Does it make you feel dirty? Slimy? Sales is not a 4-letter word (it's 5). When people think of a salesperson, they often get a vision from a book or movie, usually the worst iteration they can imagine. Why is that? Making sales is an essential part of every business. As a matter of fact, isn't that the difference between a hobby and a business?
When someone is paying you to provide them with a product or the results of a service, that's what differentiates a hobby from a business. And if there's an exchange of value (which hasn't always been money), then someone is making a sale. If you traded four chickens, a pig, and a goat for a horse, negotiating that transaction involved sales skills. Professional, ethical salespeople help customers get value in exchange for value (which in today's world is usually money). So, suppose you're a real estate agent, physical therapist, dog trainer, accountant, senior living consultant, or any other service provider. In that case, you need to make a sale to have a successful, profitable business. You need to make sales - whether you have a successful, profitable business is a separate discussion.
Making sales shouldn't scare you or make you uneasy; it's an integral part of any business. And just as with other parts of your business that you had to, or maybe still have to, get comfortable with, it's a skill you can learn. You have all of the tools you need. No one knows your products and services as well as you do, so no one should be able to explain your value better than you can. And if you have salespeople on your staff, or if you who's reading this isn't the owner, working in a business every day should give you all of the product knowledge you need to make sales. But product knowledge isn't enough. What I hope to do with this book is to help you approach sales more comfortably, for both you and your customers. That will reduce the friction in the process that you're unwittingly creating now. Less friction means more sales.
I'm not saying this will be easy, but it also doesn't have to be hard. It takes many days and weeks of doing something new and being a little or a lot uncomfortable for it to become a habit. How long it takes varies from person to person and depends on how regularly you do that activity. Once it becomes a habit for you, it will seem more natural. It will become your new normal, or as I prefer to say, your next normal.
Many of the ideas for this book came from conversations with business professionals just like you. You'd ask me at conferences: "Which of your books has...?" and if it wasn't already in one of the existing books, I'd answer: "The Next One!" So, thank you for being curious about sales, and welcome to The Next One! While I was tempted to actually call this book The Next One, I chose "Stop Selling and Help Them Buy" because it's a phrase I use so often when doing sales training. I hope that the ideas in this book will help you sell more, profit more, and be more comfortable with the sales part of your business. Thanks for taking this journey with me.
