Here’s some practical sales advice¹ from sales professionals, consultants and authors:

• Begin by building your own sales training and development program. There is a ton of information on the web about selling, much of it free. Subscribe to free sales-focused email newsletters to keep up with trends. If possible purchase and read some classic sales books like those listed at the end of this ebook. Make your sales experience like going to graduate school and master some of the key concepts of sales masters and authors. By learning and practicing at the same time, new concepts will stick much better and you’ll master the key techniques faster and more effectively.
• Become an expert in your product or service. Don’t just rely on what you’ve been told. Dig deeper to understand features and benefits, why customers buy from your company, how to determine if your product is a good fit for the customer, ideal target markets and more.

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The most successful sales people are energetic, creative problem solvers, fun loving and hard working. Some people are literally born sellers. But the vast majority of others, including natural introverts, learn that selling is persuasion, and persuasion is a mental game. Anyone can learn to do it, and benefit as a result. It’s not just yackety-yackety-yack but thinking on your feet, listening, strategizing, instantly deciding what to say next before you speak again. It’s actually fun and interesting as you focus on the process.

Unless you decide to become a hermit, you will spend the rest of your life interacting with other people, seeking win-win solutions where both sides benefit, both persuading and responding. This is not something they teach everybody in school.

So it really doesn’t matter whether you are a “natural sales athlete” or just a hard worker – what matters now is taking charge of your life, building valuable skills and confidence, so you control your destiny and your success. Nothing helps build those capacities like outside sales, calling on strangers, listening and responding, and building relationships.

You may decide later on to pursue lucrative careers like pharmaceutical sales or commercial real estate, or you may move up into management at LogoNation or another company. Whatever your career path, you’ll find that starting in outside sales is an ideal beginning.

Selling for LogoNation provides opportunities to learn valuable skills for the rest of your life, including:

• Managing your time and your workday without a boss looking over your shoulder or a teacher feeding you information in hourly lessons – basically you are running a small business
• Learning how to move a potential buyer from interest, to key selling points, through overcoming any objections, to making the purchase decision
• Developing self-confidence and a positive attitude that comes from within, overcoming fear of rejection or of failure
• Taking care of customers so they have a positive feeling about you and the company
• Working as a member of a well organized team, being responsible for having all your information accurate and orderly, so there are no errors in design or production – and again, the customer is fully satisfied
• Applying what you learned in college or university in more ways than you might expect, developing a body of knowledge that is in your brain and ready to use any time, anywhere.

“Nothing happens until somebody sells something” is one of the great truths of business that applies to many dimensions of life. While few college students are given a positive introduction in class to the power and value of selling, recent research has shown that the majority of success in business and in adult life depends on persuading someone to do something.

Starting Out Right

Starting out in the right sales job as your first position after college or university is one of the smartest things you can do. It provides a foundation you can build on, and teaches you skills you can always use for the rest of your life, no matter what job you have.

Selling involves persuading someone to buy something – not just make a decision, but agree to charge a purchase, write a check, or hand you cash in exchange for something of value which you or your company is providing them. It is your job to identify a need that they have or an opportunity you can present that is so appealing they will gladly pay for it. In the process a whole lot of applied psychology and technique takes place, some unconscious and some conscious. The more you practice this, the more you learn, the better you get, the more you sell, the more you succeed.

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