Page 133 - How To Sell Yourself

132 How to Sell Yourself
We’re all selling our ideas and ourselves all the time.
When there’s a product involved, nothing is different, but there are a few special considerations.
Selling is the process of persuading a person or a group to buy a product or a service. The more beneficial to both, the more likely it is that the sale will be made and, more important, that each party will come away satisfied with the transaction. For a sale to happen and for customer satisfaction to be the final and enduring result, some basic principles apply.
Those basic principles
First, you’ve got to know your product. You’ve got to know it thoroughly and speak about it with confidence and authority. You also have to know the competition thoroughly. This allows you to speak well of your competition while emphasizing your own strengths.
Second, you have to believe in your company, your product, and yourself. You have to be proud to represent your company. It’s obviously the best in its field. After all, it hired you.
Third, “Ya gotta know the territory,” as Meredith Willson said in one of the songs from The Music Man. That means you need to know who the decision-maker is and sell to that person. It’s a total waste of time to make the sale and then discover that you have to make it again because you’ve been selling to the wrong person. I realize that sometimes you have to do it twice, but if once will do, why repeat?
The Three I’s
To accomplish these three steps, the good salesperson must have and exercise what salesman Steve Niven calls “The Three I’s”:
• Intelligence. • Integrity.
• Initiative.
By intelligence, we’re not talking about a high IQ. We’re talk- ing about sensitivity, timing, friendliness, warmth, and solid infor- mation, with a large dose of common sense thrown in.
Integrity is the hallmark of the salesperson who has long-term success. Yes, a lot of fly-by-night people make megabucks at other