We’re Adding A Little Something To This Week’s Sales Contest…

Jul 26, 2025

Everything they told us about sales is wrong

Sales is a four letter word for most of us.

Salesperson. Close your eyes for a moment and draw the picture in your mind. Okay, now open them. Your picture probably looked like one of the guys waiting for you at the car dealership, or Leonardo DiCaprio in the Wolf of Wall Street, Alec Baldwin in Glen Garry Glen Ross or if you’re old enough Herb Tarlek. Not an attractive picture at all.

If we really think about how our days unfold we find this startling truth: in every conversation somebody is selling and somebody is being sold. At work, an idea. At lunch, where to go. At home, who’s going to fold the laundry. We are all in the sales industry whether we want to be or not.

Sales doesn’t boil down to a set of techniques

There are literally thousands of books on sales. Most promise to teach you the hidden formula for success in sales. 12 secrets to opening a sale. Six statements that are sure fire ways to close. The ABCs of getting to yes!

No.

Being successful in sales is not the result of mastering techniques. Being good in sales fundamentally starts with being a good human being. It is about putting others wants and needs in front of yours, then figuring out whether what you have to offer has value for them. If it your offer serves them, show them how. If your offer doesn’t, help them find offers that will even if they’re not yours.

There are some foundational premises, however

And those premises require work. There is indeed a discipline called sales and it starts with just that: discipline. Sales, at its heart, is finding the most powerful words you can find for the situation at hand and putting them in their most persuasive order. Break that last sentence down. Powerful words (a mastery of language). The situation at hand (an insatiable curiosity and an adeptness in listening). Putting them in persuasive order (the power to synthesize and crystallize human emotions).

These are the building blocks for selling your idea. Your plan for dinner or the movie to watch. Or, if you’re working on commission, selling your product or service successfully enough to put that dinner on the table and afford that movie.

This is a sales blog for sales professionals and sales amateurs alike. What you’ll learn are premises that I’ve found through many trials and even more errors. We’ll plumb the depths of human psychology, examine decision making heuristics and explore the artistry of the English language, all in an effort to find ways to best communicate what it is that we are wanting, thinking, dreaming or even, heaven forbid, selling.

This is not a step by step how to for sales

There are dozens of books that will teach you the sales process from prospecting to close. I am happy to recommend a few of my favorites if you’d like. What I have found over the three-plus decades that I have made a living in sales is that the art and science of sales is less a linear process than it is made out to be. In fact it’s more circular than anything else.

Seriously. Think of the last time one of your children finally did that thing you told them to do and found success. You told them over and over and over. The same conversation on repeat meeting a brick wall of perturb and indifference. And when finally the advice is taken and the success is logged, the celebration is in full swing for their victory, you stand ready for a hearty thank you and…nothing. Invariably they credit a friend for the advice or describe the epiphany arriving to them in the shower, and you had nothing to do with it.

Welcome to sales, where you can be right or you can have your way. But rarely both.

Since sales is not a linear process and because the world revolves much like the sales process I will offer you snapshots of how sales occur. The professionals will be able to categorize these snapshots and organize them into something of a coherent sales funnel, and I welcome them to do that. For the rest of us these blog posts will be a catalog of thoughts on human motivation and how we can tap that reservoir to help others get what they want for themselves and for us to get there, too.

Coffee isn’t just for closers

It’s for all of us. Because all of us are in sales whether we want to admit it or not. Come back every week for insights on selling. I’m starting us out with four initial posts and every Monday there will be something new (to you, if not me) on the art and science of getting your way by helping others get theirs.

Because that’s the beauty of sales: we get the benefit of helping others find what they want, what they need, what they never dreamed could be.

And remember, even if you did drive here in a Hyundai, you could be driving home in a $100,000 BMW. It will take a few more posts than this one, though.

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