I have worked for myself for the past 40 years with a short, three-year stint working for the City of Jerusalem...But even there, it was both clear and unclear to me that the number one skill to make a living is the ability to sell... in person, on the phone, on a video, or in writing.
In fact... it is not just a skill you need to make a living... it is a skill needed to make a life...
Because either you sell them... or they sell you....
I"d rather be the seller, thank you very much.
Now, why am I telling you this?
- First, you may not know... and if you don"t know, you probably mis-diagnose why you don"t make a living or you don"t make a life, or both.
- Second: even if you know, you probably have a foggy concept about what it takes to sell.
I am going to use the examples of current students in this article...
- Example #1: Philosophy student, graduate level.
He is in his last year. He has struggled, mightily, every time he had to write something or present something.
Today I realized that writing a thesis or the essay is a sales job... And therefore it needs to have all the elements of an effective sales job.
The number One requirement to sell something effectively is to know what you are selling.
The number Two requirement is to know who you are selling to: what they want, what they will buy.
This is something that everyone who has watched marketing videos, or bought marketing products has heard, but this is something people nod to... and don"t put any effort into.
90% of all people ignore this, and another almost 10% do it poorly, in a hurry, without actually giving it a thought.
That has included yours truly... I am guilty of this... ugh.
People who are successful and people who are not successful, often seem to be doing the same things... and yet, one is successful, the other is scraping the barrel.
And people in the middle, the semi-rotten... have done some of the work.
What is the work, you ask?
It is finding out what you are selling and finding out who you are selling it to who wants it...
When you write an essay, you need to look who is the teacher, what do they want, what do they care about. Then make up the summary of that, as the first step, and then they will love it...
Or if it is not what they would normally want... what CONTEXT can you make up for them to make what you want to give them palatable, maybe even sexy...
- Example #2: Long time student of mine...
For the 20-day skill building challenge he decided to learn writing sales letters.
He came to the webinar... and I suggested that you cannot write a sales letter, unless you have something to sell.
Trying to write a sales letter to a fantasy is an exercise in futility.
- Example #3: A student who has a product, but isn"t selling. The product is good... and yet.
I recommended that #2 and #3 team up. #3 does all the work to find out what she is selling and to whom, and provide #2 with that information...
Both benefit... and neither will, probably, want to do the work.
Why?
Because they think they know.
And that is my point here: you think you know...
This leads us back to the pie of all knowledge, the pie of everything that can be known.
Your actual knowledge is about 1%, you know that you know it, and some of it is accurate.
You also have an idea of the things you don"t know, don"t yet know... That is another percent of the whole pie.
98% of the pie has no explanation... but all the power comes from there.
That 98% is what you don"t know that you don"t know.
And you want to avoid it at all cost. You want to feel competent, knowledgeable, smart without ever setting foot in that area...
Finding out what you are selling and finding out who you are selling it to is in that 98%...
Unless you know both of those things, you can"t sell. Maybe people will sell themselves, but in spite of you.
And, of course, how you do anything is how you do everything.
You don"t know really what your parents want, you don"t know what your teachers want, you don"t even know what YOU want.
You are a BUMBLING IDIOT...
And me too... :-(
My project for the 20-day skill building challenge is to finally, after all these years, buckle down and decide what it is I am selling and who I am selling it to... and make sure that I make it sexy, desirable, just like I indicated in the essay writing example...After all I have what I have. I can do what I can do. But I can find an angle, I can find an overlap between what YOU want and what I have that can make you hungry and craving what I have... even if I never change what I have...
And that is the point: it is OK what you want, if you can sell it.
You want to be free to be... you want to be your own person... you want to be loved and appreciated...
You don"t have to give that up because your "audience", husband, children, parents are not on the market for what YOU want... find out what they want and see how you can sell what you want by finding the overlap or making it sexy.
I promise it works...
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