Benjamin Franklin once said “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing“. I’ve decided to accept the WordPress Weekly Challenge, agreeing to blog weekly in 2013, maybe more often. WordPress is the content management system this blog uses to publish the Tao Te Ching of Sales. With this challenge both you the reader, and I the writer, will take Franklin’s advice. I’m excited to bring this blog into the new year and share my thoughts on becoming a Master Seller. Thank you reader, in advance.
Path to Success
If you want to speed up the sale
you must give the deal time to breath
If you want to dispel objections
you must allow them to flourish
If you want to take new business
you must give time and patience.
This is the path to success.
Goals
No progress occurs without goals
Guideposts on the path of discovery.
Each sale a series of steps
A trek to the final purchase.
As weather and obstacles appear
The path is re-charted
Like stars to ancient navigators,
Providing guidance.
The destination has immense value
Yet it pales when compared to goals.
It’s the journey that matters
The rest fleeting.
Three Greatest Skills
Patience, Simplicity, Collaboration.
These three are the Master Sellers greatest skills.
Patient in understanding needs and desires
Frame your solution with context,
Simple when delivering your pitch
Return to the language of the buyer,
Collaborative in finding solutions
The sales closes itself.
Imperfection
Accept lost sales willingly
Accept failure as the human condition
Accept your own fallibility
Nor be overly concerned with wins and losses
Imperfection comes with being a human being.
Perfection is an ideal never obtained, yet always in mind.
Surrender Yourself to your own limits
Then you can be trusted with the tools for making sales.
Once you appreciate your strengths and weaknesses
you begin the journey to becoming the Master Seller.
Dive Into the Deep
Give up memorizing closing techniques and sales scripts
And your skills will multiply a hundred fold.
Give up professional handshakes and business etiquette
And you will rediscover connecting with buyers.
Give up number crunching and counting commission pennies
And your fears and concerns will disappear.
These tactics are outward forms only
Common and conventional in practice
They are not sufficient in and of themselves.
Instead seek simplicity in selling
Realize who you really are as a person
To cast off self
And temper Your desires.
The master seller wades from the shallows,
And dives into the deep.
The Tao Te Ching of Sales 