Why Sales Skills Help You Succeed At Almost Everything

You probably think sales skills is for salespeople right? Most people relate selling skills to being a used car salesperson. You may not have thought that you need sales skills to succeed at almost everything in life, even if you aren’t a formally appointed salesperson.

Sales skills are not just for salespeople; learning how to sell yourself is good for your personal life, career, business and adds to your future net worth – wouldn’t you want to read on at least and find out why?

Most people are taught that success is to get a good education, get a good job, and save for your retirement. Naturally, we follow this advice, get an education, get a job, work hard in life, retire happily, and in comfort, right?

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? That’s because it is too good to be true.

Formal Education Prepares you for What Exactly?

Formal education prepares you to go into the workforce using whatever qualifications you earned (technical skills) to land a job. After entering the workforce, you might receive additional training to acquire specific skills you need to perform the role you were hired for. The problem is, you can’t count on your technical skills to get to where you want to go in life. 

To achieve the level of success you want and dream of retiring in comfort, you end up making sacrifices, usually, at the cost of time with family, time doing the things you love, like time for relaxation, time for hobbies, health, and exercise. Most people convince themselves, if they work harder, pull an all-nighter, and put in the extra hours at work, you will get noticed and succeed. The sad thing is you don’t get noticed!

Here’s how taking a sales course will help you succeed in all aspects of your life.

Investing in Yourself

The key to success is to invest in yourself. By investing in yourself, you create a brighter future because you increase your self-worth and become more attractive to employers and others in the community. When you are challenged, empowered, and recognized for your contribution, you become more fulfilled. When you invest in yourself, personal and professional relationships take on a whole new meaning as you successfully navigate the pitfalls of poor communication.

As your knowledge base grows and builds up your skill sets, you increase your human capital and become more marketable. Think of successful leaders; it is not their technical skills that make them great; it’s their communication skills, the ability to inspire and lead others (sales skills). The higher you climb up the corporate ladder, the less you use your technical skills and the knowledge gained from formal education.

As you grow your informal sales skills, you become a person others want to know whereby the opportunities come to you rather than you seeking out opportunities. The key to success is how to develop a rapport with others, become a good listener, ask effective questions, and understand another person’s point of view. These are all sales skills, and as a result, you gain the ability to form a powerful network whereby you get introduced to influencers and get you noticed. 

Selling Yourself and Your Ideas

You may never want to become a CEO, own your own business, lead and manage others; however, you can make the most of what you have right now by learning to sell yourself and your ideas. Understanding how people buy into your ideas and what motivates them to work alongside you cooperatively and to be able to persuade others (for the right reasons) will give you the success you crave rather than remain in your comfort zone where nothing grows.

Regardless of what you do or who you are, you are already in the sales and persuasion business. You have ideas, and you need to develop the skills to sell your ideas. You might need a budget for that idea; therefore, you have to sell yourself and your ideas to get the resources you need to bring your ideas to fruition. If you want a new job or a promotion, you have to sell yourself in an interview or sell yourself into a role with more responsibility.

If you are thinking of starting a business, you may need seed money or raise capital to bring your business idea to life. This means selling your ideas and persuading investors or a bank to loan you the money. No work environment works without a team effort and mutual corporation; therefore, if you need an invoice paid or a colleague to help you out with a project, you need sales skills to get them to cooperate.

Think of dating; don’t you have to sell yourself to a future husband or wife that they should start dating you? 

Effective Communicating is Selling

As you move through the ranks in life, your strategy, visionary and strategic thinking skills become far more important than your technical skills. Top of the list is your ability to communicate your thoughts and ideas effectively, which is why successful people hire a life coach or business coach. In the work environment, you need to communicate with your peers, direct reports, bosses, customers, and vendors. Communicating upwards and sideways is a whole lot different than communicating downwards to someone you manage or supervise.

In your personal life, you need to communicate well with neighbors, friends, your partner or spouse, and your children, often to get them to do things they don’t want to do. If you’re a parent, you need to persuade your children to clean their rooms, do their homework, and help around the house. When you understand buyer behavior (yes, your kids have to buy into what you want) and the concept of the buying and selling process, this is the key to success. By taking a sales course, you learn the fine art of communication because this will build long-lasting relationships where cooperation is the key to success.

Change happens in life with or without your permission, and you only have to look at the 2020 coronavirus pandemic to understand the impact of change. So many people lost their jobs and had to find alternative means of income. Therefore taking a sales course and learning how to sell and market yourself and your ideas help you deal with change more effectively. That’s how you get noticed in the workplace, and with sales and marketing skills under your belt, it will help get you there faster.

Investing in a Sales Course

You need exceptional communication and negotiation skills to sell your ideas. You need exceptional communication skills if you are to lead others in a supervisory role. What a sales course teaches you is buyer behavior and buyer motivation. When you understand buyer behavior, it is much easier to sell others on your ideas and motivate them to listen to you.

Sales and communication skills are what you need to leverage your employability and, with that, your earning power. I am not talking about improving your technical skills; it improves your technical skills by developing super skills (sales, communication, and leadership skills). 

With improved communication skills, you will get noticed. As you get noticed, your self-confidence increases, which puts you in the market to sell yourself into other job roles where you have more responsibility, and of course, with that comes a greater capacity to earn more. When you earn more, you have more to invest in savings or other investments giving you greater options down the track. Pure technical skills won’t put you on the fast track – super selling skills will.

Investing in Yourself Pays Off

If you earn $50k a year, in 40 years, you would have earned $2 million. However, after expenses, not much is left to save or invest for your future. If you want to increase your earning power, get a promotion, start your own small business, grow a business, you must invest in your super skills like selling, leadership, and communication skills. It’s those skills that increase your earning power, not your technical skills.

If you took two people with the same qualifications, same technical skills, good communication skills and one didn’t, who do you think is more likely to succeed?

Supercharge your Skills

Once you leave school or college, if you don’t continue to invest in yourself, you become stale. That’s okay if you want to remain in your comfort zone. Some people have no ambition for themselves or their family; that’s their choice to do nothing, say nothing, and be comfortable being nothing. Often the reason they don’t move outside their comfort zone into the learning zone with fear. However, if you want to supercharge your future earnings, investing in selling skills gives you options you probably never thought about.

When you amplify your earning capacity, this leads to more options in your life. One of the fastest ways to improve your options is to invest in sales, leadership, and communication skills to build your personal networks. 

Taking a sales course gives you the skills to build trust and rapport, the Bi-Sell-Cycle™ teaches you the importance of being an active listener, and learning how to ask effective questions will catapult you through the barriers to success. All of these skills are not technical, they are the super-soft skills that will not only help you build networks that help you succeed, but these skills also help build your personal net worth.

On a Final Note

Learn how the Strategez for Success Coaching Model helps you master a life of Success. With the help of a life coach, success coach, or business coach, you will easily fast track your way to a successful life with no barriers.

Why wait when you can learn to thrive, not simply survive! Contact us now or set up your FREE discovery session here to find out if Success Coaching, Life Coaching, or Business Coaching is right for you. 

Download some of our FREE sales cheat sheets and toolkits here.