Selling Is NOT a Dirty Word

There's been a trend over the last few years for training courses and products to be promoted with the line that you can "get more clients without selling", "sell without selling" and other, frankly, arrant nonsense.

These courses prey on the small business owner and professional's dislike of selling. They promise that if you use their magic techniques (which look a lot like time tested approaches to sales) then you can get a flood of customers without having to sell.

But of course, you can no more get customers without selling than you can eat without food or walk without moving your legs.

Selling is simply the process of exchanging goods or services for money.

There's good selling and bad selling. Most of us have experienced a lot of bad selling which often makes us think it's not something we want to do ourselves.

And selling inevitably involves risk. Our potential customer might say no. What's worse: they might think less of us if they say no.

Many of us (and I have to admit that I fall into this category myself) aren't naturally comfortable selling. We have this underlying fear of selling. In fact, a surprisingly large number of professional salespeople also suffer from sales call reluctance.

So we mash together the experiences we have of bad selling with our own natural fear and discomfort and tell ourselves that there's something wrong with selling. That it's somehow unscrupulous or manipulative or demeaning. That salespeople are looked down upon by everyone, and so we wouldn't want to be see as one.

Ironically enough, that latter perspective is often held by lawyers and consultants who perhaps ought to look in the mirror and think about the kind of esteem their own profession is generally held in.

I chatted to a business owner today who corrected me when I spoke about selling.

"Don't you mean helping?" he said.

"People buy to save money, make money, solve a problem or to make them look good.. I like to call it helping."

Others call selling business development or even enrollment.

Here's the problem with all these euphemisms. They reinforce the notion that there's something wrong with selling. If we can't bear to associate ourselves with it or think that others might see us as selling then our ability to learn how to sell effectively is severely hampered.

And they play into the hands of the "sell without selling crowd".

Look into the courses that offer to teach people how to "sell without selling" and you'll usually find they're outdated versions of basic sales processes and techniques that have been around for decades. But they're sold to people who dislike the notion of selling so much that they just haven't been exposed to them.

It is absolutely possible to get new customers and clients without being pushy, obnoxious or manipulative. But that's not "not selling". It's good selling.

Rather than hiding away from the word, small business owners and professionals need to realise that selling is exactly what they need to be able to do.

And when they accept that, instead of buying into the latest "here's how to get customers without selling" scheme, they'll be able to invest in learning what actually works to get customers: good selling.