Sales is not aggression! Sales are not undue persuasion! Selling is not sweet-talking! You agree or disagree?

Have you attended an interview before and the panel says to you “Sell me this pen”! Very cliché questioning right?, but they almost always ask that same question in all sales interviews. I have also been asked a number of times myself. Fundamentally, that question betrays a deep-seated confusion about the functional understanding of sales.

Sales is not aggression! Sales are not undue persuasion! Selling is not sweet-talking. This explains why many companies and hiring managers hire the wrong kind of sales people simply because they could sweet-talk them into believing they are capable. Sales is offering solutions that are fitted enough to solve the problem and helping the buyer to see the value of it. If selling is fitting the solution rather than just offering it then some work has got to be done before you ever show up in front of the prospect. As a matter of fact, for many successful sale more than% of selling happens before you meet the buyer. How is this?- because you dimension every problem before offering the solution. Whatever you are selling, there should be a need that it fills. In many instances, there is a problem that the prospect needs to solve. It is your job to marry both.

When a solution is fitted to a problem and you employ the voice of existing customers in giving testimonials about the results that the solution produces, you will not have to always push your sales. Rather than being that sales guy who wants to push anything down the throat of everyone be the one who invests his time dimensioning the problem and then fitting the solution squarely to it. Sometimes, it is even necessary and by far more respectable and professional to walk away when there is no fit between the already dimensioned problem and the solution that you sell. This almost always lands you a better future deal.