Sell or Be Sold(3)

I find it comical when people tell me, “I could never be a salesperson because I could never work on commission.” I’m like, “What do you mean? Your entire life is a commission. There’s no salary guaranteed in life. The whole world is on commission and the whole world is required to sell!”

It’s been said that the best things in life are free, but I don’t agree with that. The best things in life are those that come in the form of a commission for some extra, well-done effort! Happiness, security, safety, a great home, a great family, love, confidence, friends, your church, your community, and on and on—are all commissions for someone’s hard work at selling others on a better way of life.

True love, the ultimate commission, is earned by those who find the right partner, take care of him or her, continue to create the relationship, and keep it growing. There’s no guarantee that a relationship will get you love. First, you’ve got to persuade the person to take an interest in you. Then you have to find out what they want and what makes them happy. Then you have to produce it and keep producing it. But somewhere along the line, you have to sell the other person on the idea that you’re the one that he or she can trust to create a life with. If you succeed and exceed the person’s expectations, you will get the commission of love.

Health is not guaranteed in life. Health is a commission for taking care of yourself and your mind. When a person successfully sells himself on eating right, working out, and taking care of his attitude, he gets a commission of having good health.

The great benefit of children is also a commission of sorts and is not guaranteed to every marriage. You still have to convince your partner to have sex with you, and even marriage doesn’t guarantee you sex. If you can’t close your partner on wanting to have sex with you, then you won’t get the great commission of children. Once you have the kids, you have to continue to sell. Concepts such as discipline, work ethic, education, good manners, and homework all have to be sold. If you don’t do the selling, they will sell you. Kids are the best salespeople on the planet. They’re passionate, relentless, and persistent closers, able to break down their parents’ resistance until they get what they want!

The point is, selling is about life, and every area of life involves selling. The more consistently you can win at selling, the more commissions you’ll get rewarded in life!

So get it! Everyone on this planet is involved in sales. There are no exceptions to this law. You’re involved in selling almost every minute of every day. If this is somehow distasteful to you, then you have some misunderstandings about selling. When I say “selling,” do you think of a fast-talking swindler who can sell anything to anyone? Maybe you immediately get a picture of some guy who’s a confrontational, high-pressure type? Both of these images are negative extremes of selling and in no way describe the skills of a true salesperson. Confrontation and pressure are attributes of the amateur who doesn’t understand sales and ends up resorting to unpleasant tactics.

When I discuss sales in this book, not only am I referring to the professional, paid salesperson, but I’m also covering the everyday use of basic persuasion skills and how to use them to get your way in life.





BEWARE OF FALSE DATA


The subject of selling, like any other subject, is full of false information that has been perpetuated over the years. This false data may be partly responsible for the poor impression of this profession and very needed life skill. “False data” is information that is not factual but is accepted as truth and passed along.

For instance, most of my life I wanted to own real estate and had a particular interest in buying apartment buildings. When I first got started, most of the people I talked to about apartments immediately told me that owning apartments was a nightmare and that I would have difficulties with tenants at midnight when the plumbing sprang a leak. Though tenants would obviously get upset if there was a plumbing leak, it is false data about owning apartments that actually causes people to lose interest in buying apartments. I’ve owned more than 2,500 apartments and, trust me, the renter is not the problem with owning them. Not having renters is a problem; leaky faucets are just an issue to deal with. Of course there are problems with owning apartment buildings, but so what? I assure you that the problems are minuscule compared to the rewards. People who knew very little about buying apartments used this false data as an excuse for me to not buy these buildings.

The whole subject of money is full of false data, most of which are passed on by people who give advice on money, but don’t have any themselves.