Sell or Be Sold(6)

Salespeople drive products, individual businesses, complete industries, and whole economies. Like many people, I went into sales when I got out of college because I didn’t know what I really wanted to do with my life. I decided to try selling until I found a “real” job. I chose sales because it was easy to get into and I didn’t have to make any life-changing decisions. Even after making my decision, my family, friends, and teachers rebuked me, saying that I should get a “real” job.

The problem for me was that the so-called “real” jobs didn’t appear to pay “real” money—plus they seemed to be boring traps that sapped the life out of people. The only thing I could associate these “real” jobs with was the teachers who promoted them. Even today, these “real” jobs come with “real” titles, like doctor, lawyer, accountant, nurse, chemist, engineer, stockbroker, chiropractor, etc. But the funny thing is, all of these professionals have to sell themselves to others to make it in their careers. Their success in life is utterly dependent on one skill more than any other, and that skill is selling.





SALES OR COLLEGE?


It’s a phenomenal mistake that the culture today doesn’t value selling enough to teach courses on it. Not once throughout my entire formal education was selling introduced as an option. I wondered how respectable and desirable the field could be if it wasn’t taught in school. If the subject isn’t taught in the great “learning institutions” of the world, it must not be a real career. Right? Wrong! No one taught me about money or investing or real estate in school. But that doesn’t mean that those subjects aren’t valuable. Schools don’t teach people how to make a marriage successful or how to raise children, either, and what could be more valuable than that?

Many young people attending my seminars have told me that they were torn between going to college and continuing with their sales careers. My response has always been the same: While the schools teach people very needed basics to get along in life and in the working world, no school can make a great person. You will learn absolutely necessary requirements in school, and you might make some great connections, but schools are not capable of making a person successful. Only by application will you or anyone else become successful or great in a field.

Survey the top one hundred most financially successful people in the world today, and I bet you can’t find one who attributes his success to his formal education. Many of them didn’t even go the traditional route. That is not to suggest that schools are bad or are a waste of time by any means; but higher education is not “the thing” that causes people to do great things. Look around and you will find the school systems we have today producing a workforce of people who are able to remember what they read rather than apply what they learned. While you will learn many very necessary basics in school, you won’t learn how to balance a checkbook, increase your net worth, save money, negotiate a great deal, communicate, resolve problems, or increase your value in the marketplace. You will only learn such skills by seeking other information outside schools. That is what most people know they need to do in order to really improve their abilities. A basic education, while very necessary, cannot be considered an “end all.” While there are some great teachers in the school system, it’s unfortunate that due to the ridiculously low salaries, many of them are only regurgitating curriculums and forcing students to study courses and subjects that will never be used in their day-to-day lives. Ask any business owner what his greatest problem is, and it will always be the same. He can’t find people who can think independently, who can solve problems, and who can increase his business and help him expand his company.

Schools teach students English, math, grammar, chemistry, history, and geography, which are absolutely necessary, but they never take the time to teach things as important as selling, persuading, and really meeting an employer’s needs. The schools, for whatever reason, are just not set up to teach the things that may make the biggest difference. I don’t know why that is, but I can tell you that I know salespeople who are making more money than heart surgeons, with far less liability and much less stress.





ALL PROFESSIONS RELY ON SALES


I know for a fact that for a person to have a great life, he’ll have to know and apply the skills of any great salesperson. You can hire a doctor, a lawyer, or an architect, but you can’t get along in life without the ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, and close a deal.

These skills will prove more useful and vital than anything you’ll learn through a formal education. I’m not suggesting that these other areas of knowledge are not valuable and worthy, because they are. I’m only demonstrating that selling is a valuable, worthy, and respectable profession and a vital life skill for all. Rather than being an hourly worker bee, you can become a highly paid individual with no ceiling on your earning potential. While others may have decided that sales isn’t a respectable career, I can tell you that I’ve been able to spend time with leaders in many professions, from engineers and bankers to actors and film directors. Every one of those people has had to build a career around selling to get to the top of their industries. Of those top producers, every one has told me that they have studied books on negotiating, selling, and persuading. Why? Because they understand that those skills are vital to their success.