Date: August 6th, 2016 10:32 AM
Author: Curious coffee pot
BY GRANT CARDONE -- "How I got Into sales"
I am a salesman because I had to be, not because I wanted to be. Truth be told I hated sales when I got into it. I hear people say, “you are a natural salesman.” Wrong. I am the most unnatural sales person you would ever meet and hated sales the first eight years I was in it. At the age of 17 on my first sales job in a clothing store my card said, “sales associate” and I hated it. I hated talking to strangers, “is there something I can help you with?” I was awkward, often tongue-tied, scared to approach people, hated rejection and my results relied purely on luck. My results relied on whether I met the right customer or not — or so I thought.
I got in sales because my survival depended on it not because I wanted to. The career that had been set for me didn’t pay any money. Sales was the only job offered to me and I hated it. I told my uncle, “I didn’t go to college to become a salesman.” And he said, “You didn’t go to college to be out of work either.” So I took the sales job and for the next two years I hated it. I hated building rapport with a customer, asking probing questions, and hated asking for the offer. Hate is not too strong of a word. I hated the ups and downs, the commission only, the rejection, appointments not showing, customers lying to me…and the begging and follow up it seemed I was expected to do.
Over the years I have talked to tens of millions of professional sales people from every industry. I was speaking to a thousand insurance agents in Scottsdale, where the average earner in the room makes $970,000 a year. I asked them, “How many of you got into sales because you wanted to be in sales?” Almost no one raised their hands. I was speaking to three thousand network marketers in Vegas and asked, “Who likes sales?” Almost no one raised their hands.
The point is you don’t need to like sales — you need to understand your entire future depends on it and quit fighting it. Very few people inherently like sales. Everyone I know who loves sales love it because they are successful at it. In 25 years I have never met a person in sales who loves it that is failing at it. I have met a lot of sales people that do love their profession and they all have two things in common — they make money and they KNOW what they are doing. I’ve met thousands of greats; introverts, extroverts, male, female, boomers, millennials, all the varying different personality types from the very competitive, direct, and results driven to those much more reserved, modest, low-key and cautious.
And that is just the sales cycle, that doesn’t include prospecting, follow-up, cold calls or how to stay motivated. So are you ready to get in sales yet? Before I committed to sales I was broke. Once I committed and started learning everything I could about sales, I began making real money for the first time in my life. I’ve mastered sales and now I’m a hecta-millionaire. You can have anything you want in life if you learn how to sell. People go to school to get a “good job” paying 60-80K a year. In sales you can start doing 60-80K a month, but you have to learn sales. If you are serious about ever getting rich, commit to sales today.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3313569&forum_id=2#31119412)