[nabentre] learning how to sell?

[Kane Brolin]

Hello to Brandon, Cheryl, and others interested in this thread.

I don't often weigh in on the Blind Entrepreneurs list.  But this is a
fascinating discussion, and it is close to my heart, because sales
represents a big part of what I do as well, and I have been totally
blind for all of my life but have been connected to direct sales only
since age 33 (or 15 years ago).  Since this type of business was not
in my blood or in my wife's blood whatsoever, this is something we
have had to figure out, much like old dogs learning new tricks.

Brandon, I understand from a previous posting that you believe your
true calling might lie in the fine arts.  Yet I want to tell you that
I respect your guts and your courage to reach out and do something of
an entrepreneurial or sales nature, especially when you are young.
What you will get out of this is not just the commission from selling
a product or service; you also will refine your networking skills and,
if you play it right, you will make personal connections and
friendships that may help to land other opportunities for you that
aren't necessarily connected to sales.  And you will gain a mechanism
to cope in a healthy way with rejection.  I believe that blind persons
often are poor, underemployed, and lacking in confidence because they
never have been encouraged to push through rejection, gain from the
positive side effects of failure, and persist in following their
dreams.  The message I send to all blind persons who seem to have
people skills is that if you show some promise in a sales-related
vocation, you won't have to worry about whether the government chooses
to give us the right to earn a minimum wage.  As much as I stand
behind HR-831 and fixing the Workforce Investment in sync with Act
with NFB political agitation, I know I don't want to be living on
minimum wage either, and I am more interested in blind persons' having
power over our future rather than just the legal right to a presumed
benefit.  If you prove you can make money for someone through selling,
you won't ever have to settle for Third World pay and you won't have
to bend over backward proving why someone should hire you as a blind
person; the numbers will speak for themselves.

Brandon, probably the most informative thing that has stuck with me
through sales training and the sales experience is that selling is not
telling.  If you want to be an effective salesperson, you should use
your two ears and one mouth in the proportion that your Creator gave
them to you.  If you become sincerely good at caring about what the
guy or the lady on the other side of the table needs, and if you
wholeheartedly believe in the rightness of what you are selling, then
approaching your friends and family should not be a point of
uneasiness.  It should constitute an opportunity--one that is far
superior to cold-calling.  If you listen more than you talk, you might
also find it increasingly easy to get out of your own way and avoid
prejudices that will limit your sales success.  I cite an example from
your own e-mail of earlier today, related to financial products:

On 2/20/2014, Brandon Keith Biggs <brandonkeithbiggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't believe life insurance is for students at all and I think the products [World
> Financial Group sells] > are just way too much upkeep for any person to manage > over their whole life.

As long as you honestly feel this way, then you shouldn't be selling
their products.  I know nothing about World Financial Group or the
specific products they sell or their techniques for selling those; but
as a general principle, I stand by what I said just above irrespective
of which firm is training you.  But keep in mind that life
insurance--at least term insurance--might well be appropriate for a
student.  Keep in mind that in this day and age, many young students
entering college already have children of their own.  Do you think it
might be important for even the infant daughter of a 21-year-old or
31-year-old college student to be covered adequately for her own needs
in the event Mom or Dad suffers a fatal accident or illness?  Even in
the small community where I live, I know a lymphoma survivor who got
cancer when she was 19.  Another of my business associates, still in
his twenties, has symptoms that resemble what some leukemia sufferers
start with.  A diabetic who does not need to depend on insulin can
still get affordable life insurance coverage.  One that comes to a
point of needing to take insulin injections, even while young, is
unlikely to get any type of coverage. Think outside the box and you
might come to somewhat different conclusions--as long as you know what
is motivating someone to sit across the table from you to talk about
their situation in the first place.  Learn how to ask questions and
make sure your prospective customer gets the message that you have
internalized what he has said.
>
> Let me say that I'm only looking for a place to get to the top sales spot and hold it > for a couple years. I'm not doing it really for the money, just the education and
> experience.

Then this is another reason, Brandon, that I caution you against
financial planning or money management/brokerage as an industry.  As
someone who has done this kind of work for 14 years, I will tell you
that this is not primarily about sales; it's about advice.  Actually,
it's primarily about your client.  There's nothing that confuses or
alienates a client more than the experience of being passed from
advisor to advisor to advisor, because usually this happens without
prior warning as a certain broker or financial planner gets fired,
gets disciplined for wrongdoing, or changes firms without the legal
sanction to speak with their clients about what is about to happen.
When you work in financial services with the intent truly to do it
right, you don't simply play around with it for a couple of years.
It's about being committed to the well-being of your client in the
long term, not just being involved with him in the near-term.  If you
do become a financial planner or money manager, you do need a great
deal of proven experience and, in all likelihood, advanced
professional designations earned through test-taking, to demonstrate
your worthiness to serve those who are affluent. Taking board
examinations is very difficult--especially if you are blind and
especially if the testing organization does not give you the type of
accommodations for which you are best suited.  So judging from why you
want to do sales, my belief at this stage is that you should try your
hand at something more transactional in nature.  I agree with you that
hitching your wagon to the limited world of blindness products--APH,
HumanWare, Freedom Scientific, or HIMS--is not a good long-term play.
I'm sure you are hip to the reality that more and more blind young
people are telling the makers of expensive, limited,
blindness-specific high technology to go fly a kite, as they do much
of what they do via their off-the-shelf mobile phone or via lower-cost
or free access solutions such as System Access or NVDA.  As a young
man, I was determined not to get pigeon-holed in the blindness/rehab
industry, and this is why I chose to take paths that were quite hard,
particularly a generation ago.

As for sales philosophy?  Self-help and sales training books,
Websites, and DVDs have been popping up like mushrooms in the last 30
years or so.  But before I ever set foot in the office to get licensed
as a broker, I read some classic work authored by Dale Carnegie, who
got into the sales training business before anyone else of note was
doing it.  His book "How To Develop Self-Confidence And Influence
People By Public Speaking," published in 1956, is available as a
digital download through Learning Ally.
http://teacherally.learningally.org/BookDetails.aspx?BookID=HQ048  I
read the earliest edition I could get, authored by Dale Carnegie
himself, instead of the updated editions published by his heirs since
the 1980s.

I also see lots of value in Stephen Covey's writings, some of which
are voiced by Covey himself and made available through Audible.com.
Covey's work is misquoted and mis-applied in the business world almost
as much as the Bible is misquoted and mis-applied in the wider world.
But taken at face value, Stephen Covey puts a lot of things in
perspective--not just in connection to sales.  Covey has been sorely
missed since his recent death.

Lastly, Brandon, you also seem interested in financial literacy and in
working through your own understanding of how life and business
opportunities should work for yourself.  Robert Kiyosaki has been an
inspiration to many; he wrote the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" along with
a lot of sequels.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki
Although I have not studied his work in detail, I know much of it,
too, is available from places such as Learning Ally and Bookshare.
One blind acquaintance who studied Kiyosaki's books tells me gained
inspiration and mastery over his life through taking Kiyosaki's
teachings to heart.

I wish you success in whatever way you turn.  Don't forget that it is
about cultivating relationships and leaving the persons you encounter
in better shape than when you found them.  Do this enough, and the
money you need eventually will come to you.

Cheryl, I value your comments, too.  It sounds as if you definitely
learned a lot through the school of hard knocks.  It would be
interesting to converse with you at some point.

Kind regards,

-Kane