Helping vs. Selling
It took me a few years at the beginning of my sales career to figure this one out but when it "clicked" it changed the direction of my career and I stopped referring to what I did everyday as my job. I have crossed paths with so many people in my life who refer themselves as a "sales professional” and then before they can even get a business card out of their pocket they use these two words interchangeably. Red flags for days. If you find yourself constantly trying to memorize your "scripts" in the same way a third grader tries to memorize their flash-cards, then you should probably either re-think your career choice or maybe you just need to stop trying so hard. True "sales professionals" don't try to "sell" anything. We don’t even use that word. We are in the business of helping people even if helping means less money in our pockets at that particular moment. Sales professionals don’t look for instant gratification, those people are called order-takers. As a real estate agent, my goal is to help my client make an informed decision by providing them with knowledge, based on experiences they don't have and resources in which they don't otherwise have access. Sometimes this means I get to play the dirty role of devil's advocate which is often times followed by an emotionally fueled response that doesn't look anything like cupcakes and rainbows, yet always seems to be beneficial at the end of the day. Sometimes being a sales professional means that you spend a ton of time researching something and you can’t even get the respect of a returned phone call. So what. I'm sure you learned something along the way that will benefit a future client and the time you invest building value in yourself today will build your reputation for tomorrow. So keep doing the work.... and understand that value is not something you will learn from a book. It's something you will only learn from life.