It should be no secret, selling is an essential skill for higher levels of success and wealth in your personal and professional life. To advance as an owner, leader, manager, or professional, at a minimum, you have to be knowledgeable and competent in this critical communication skill.

Want to achieve a rapid increase in your revenues?  Then simply get better at selling. You will experience an immediate and significant return on your investment of time and money … MORE SALES.

So, how well are you doing at selling right now?

Let’s rate your current selling skills and confidence level. On a scale of 1-10 (10=excellent), how would you rate your overall selling skills?  How would you rate your selling confidence?  Your level of comfort?  Your overall selling effectiveness?  If a business owner, how effective is your selling team?

If you are at 7 or below in any of those ratings, there is much room for improvement and better financial success. Whether you are an owner, executive, manager or salesperson, being effective at selling (with external and/or internal customers) is vital to your growth and success. Having a high-performing sales team is even more so.

If you think about it, whether at home or work, you are always selling … your vision, ideas, beliefs, opinions, viewpoints, solutions, and your services/products.  Selling is simply helping others better define, understand and then achieve what they want.  If you help others achieve what they want, you in turn get what you want.  Since you are always selling, you might as well get better at this critically important communication skill. Ready to improve?

Anyone can and should learn to sell more effectively. It’s not that hard.  Just be open-minded and willing to grow.  Like any worthwhile skill, you will be a slight disaster before you become a master.  Allow yourself to learn and make mistakes, but keep on improving. Do not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by selling … it’s not complicated.  Selling is simply an effective communication exchange with the focus on achieving a win-win outcome.  Both parties should leave the situation better off than before.

Another way to think about selling is that it’s a simple four-part communication process:

1. you need to establish rapport and trust with the other party,
2. you need to ask questions to gain meaningful information about their needs/wants,
3. you need to share relevant information about your solutions, and
4. you need to reach an agreement on how to proceed.

Again, don’t over-complicate it. Selling is a simple communication dance that can be learned and mastered.

Here is an easy way to remember an effective selling/communication process, it’s called the READ sales process – always READ the needs of your buyer or other party: 1) Relate, 2) Establish Needs, 3) Advance Solutions, and 4) Determine Next Step.  Follow the READ process in any communication or selling situation and you will always focus on the other person and their needs first. You can’t go wrong. Effective selling is more about leveraging a proven and repeatable process than possessing a certain personality.

When done right, selling is a noble, worthy and helpful skill. Think about it, you are helping the other person to better define what they truly need and want in their personal or professional life. You help them define their current situation, their ideal situation (ideal future), and then bridge the GAP … the difference between where they are now and where they truly want to be. You are helping someone define and achieve a better future … nothing unprofessional or sleazy about that!  The key is to get your clients and prospects to intellectually understand that “ideal future” and then to emotionally want it and take action now to get it … you must speak to both their brain and heart.

Here is a personal example of how the right mindset can work wonders with selling. As CEO and Co-Founder of The Growth Coach, a business coaching franchise, I so believed in the value and transformative power of our business coaching process that I felt on a mission to recruit hundreds of franchise owners to our system as well as to help promote our coaching solutions to several thousand clients each and every year.  I knew with certainty that we had a unique and great product/service and I wanted to share it with the world through a franchise system and help entrepreneurs everywhere. Since our proven coaching process helps owners to have greater success, balance and fulfillment … and we guarantee the results … why wouldn’t we proudly promote and enthusiastically share it with every entrepreneur?  It never felt like selling.  Do you feel the same about your offering?

In fact, when I was a business coach before forming The Growth Coach franchise, I felt like I was committing malpractice if I ever uncovered a small business owner’s needs/ problems and then didn’t help them immediately to take corrective action. I didn’t feel I was aggressively selling, just passionately serving … that’s how much I believed in our business coaching solutions.

That mindset was like a doctor who would never, ever, ever consider letting a suffering/wounded patient leave their office without getting help or healed. I was no different. I knew our coaching solution would absolutely help heal a client’s  business and personal life if given the chance. I had developed a gift (a proven and guaranteed coaching process) that I wanted to share with others and in fact … felt a moral obligation to do so. While launching a business coaching franchise system was scary and way out of my comfort zone, I felt obligated and compelled to do it for the sake of helping and healing others.  And doing so never felt like selling but simply serving a greater cause.

Every entrepreneur needs to tap into the more noble dimensions of what he/she does or what they sell.  Agreed?

At The Growth Coach, we help all our clients (owners, manager, professionals) gain greater comfort, confidence and capabilities so they can be more effective at selling … it’s a part of our quarterly business group coaching process.  Furthermore, we can go into any size business and also help their entire sales team become high-performing unit with our Sales Mastery Program, an on-going sales coaching and accountability program.  For example, we could function as a part-time Sales Manager and teach your sales team a proven, structured and repeatable selling process and then keep them accountable for using it and mastering it to get significant results.  Because of the on-going accountability, our coaching process (with a money-back guarantee) helps to change the mindsets, skills, and daily habits of your sales professionals … and that is what produces sustainable and superior results.  Don’t just train your sales team, TRANSFORM them.

Now go out and sell … help others, share your gifts, and do something very noble … it’s a moral obligation.