“Daddy, I Don’t Want to go to School!”

The other day, one of my daughters said to me, “Daddy, I don’t want to go to school.”

What happened next was that she tried to convince me why I should allow her to stay home from school, while I tried to convince her why she should go.

In other words, she was trying to sell me on an idea, while I was trying to counter sell her on a different idea.

Whether you realize it or not, we are each “selling” each other on our ideas all day long and every day of the year.

There are two ways to get somebody to do something you want:

1) You can try to force them through use (and sometimes abuse) of power;

Or

2) You can sell them on the idea.

An example of the former would be if I told my daughter, “Young lady, you are going to school… because I said so!”

Another example would be, “I want this report done by Monday morning or you are fired!”

Even when you have formal authority and power, using / abusing it has a cost — it damages the relationship.

The second approach is to “sell” somebody on why they should be willing and even glad to do what you want.

THAT is the difference between someone who knows how to “sell” in everyday life, versus someone who does not.

Now I know many people have a very bad impression of sales and salespeople. That’s because most people have experienced being sold to as a form of one-sided deal-making.

This kind of sales can best be described as: “I win, you lose.”

This kind of selling can work in some situations, but it has one major drawback.

Once you do this, the other person will never want to do “business” with you again.

That approach only ends up in a one-time sale.

There is an entirely different approach to sales that once understood is easy, fun and can be done with the utmost integrity.

It can best be described as helping other people get what they want — in a way that happens to involve you getting what you want too.

The focus is on helping other people. If being helpful to others is something you feel comfortable with, you can be excellent at my kind of “sales.”

I recently taught a class on How to Sell Your Ideas in Everyday Life (Without Feeling “Sales-y”). In the class, I shared how to implement this different approach to sales that allows you to “sell” with integrity.

I’ve decided to release my program on How to Sell in a limited release next month. If you missed the class and would be interested in learning from it, you can join the notification list for the release. Just complete the form below to be notified when the program is available.