Learn to sell

and he needs to sell her on dating him. The sales pitch is him listing the benefits she’d receive by dating him (promotes the benefits, not the features), as he showers her with attention and demonstrates how he is unique, relative to the competition (unique selling proposition). A student decides to go to art school rather than engineering school and needs to sell his parents on the merits of funding his university experience. The sales pitch is finding their pain point (not wanting an uneducated kid living at home requiring constant care and attention), proposing a solution (schooling) and the parents agreeing to fund tuition (the close).

Learning how to sell your ideas to other people is a fundamental skill that’s critical to personal and professional success. People who strive to achieve extraordinary levels of success must learn to sell their ideas with passion, vigor and confidence in order to gain cooperation. The result will be that people will help us achieve our big goals and, in the process, help themselves.

The 10 Critical Steps necessary to effective selling are:

1. Sell yourself first so you are committed to your product or service. 2. Focus on solving a problem or relieving a pain.

3. Focus on helping create value, save time, reduce risk or make money.

4. Build rapport and trust. People buy from people they like. 5. Find the emotional reason people will buy, justified with logic. 6. Practice handling objections.

7. A.B.C. (Always Be Closing).

8. Learn how to handle rejection and never take no for an answer.

9. Use a system that supports your sales effort. 10. Never quit.

Eamonn has a B. Eng. (Electrical) from Lakehead University, MBA (Finance) from University of Toronto, and has completed Executive Education at Stanford University Graduate School of Business. He lives in Vancouver, Canada. Follow him on twitter @Eamonnpercy.