“I hate sell­ing!  I don’t know how you guys do it.”

These were the words of a CEO at a lunch meet­ing I attended last year.  This CEO was address­ing the head of her sales force.  It was a casual com­ment, but one that caused me some concern.

I won­dered what could have pro­duced such a strong neg­a­tive reac­tion from this CEO.  Was she think­ing of past inter­ac­tions with sales­peo­ple who were way short of pro­fes­sional?  Could it be that her intro­verted behav­ioral style makes her fear­ful of seem­ing pushy or manipulative?

Regard­less of her rea­sons, I believe my con­cern is well-founded.  There are too many pro­fes­sion­als and lead­ers who have an unhealthy per­spec­tive of what sales is.

Here is my def­i­n­i­tion of sales:  the act of help­ing some­one to assess whether your prod­ucts or ser­vices can assist them with their needs, wants, chal­lenges, or oppor­tu­ni­ties.   When it is done pro­fes­sion­ally and with the right motives, sales is all about help­ing people.

Every­body in my com­pany under­stands that they are in sales.  This includes our recep­tion­ist, who deliv­ers the first impres­sion to a prospec­tive cus­tomer.  It includes our account­ing team, who may have to work through a pay­ment sit­u­a­tion with a client who is weigh­ing the value of their coach­ing expe­ri­ence.  It also includes me.  I sell our vision and our ser­vices every day, both to my team and the world we serve.  We are all about help­ing peo­ple to see how our ser­vices might assist them.

I believe that every CEO must be mas­ter­ful at sell­ing.  We sell our ser­vices or prod­ucts to our cus­tomers, our ven­dors, the media, and our boards.  We also must sell our vision to our team.  Sell­ing is about help­ing peo­ple around us to see how our prod­ucts or ser­vices — or the pur­suit of our vision — can help them in busi­ness and in life.

Sell well.  There is an end­less sup­ply of needs, wants, chal­lenges, and oppor­tu­ni­ties out there!

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Tags: Leadership, Selling, Teamwork, Vision

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 10:17 am and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.