Selling

I read an article today from Bill Lee's newsletter that I get in my email. It is a great newsletter. It is brief and to the point about selling in general in the construction field but can be applied in other fields as well. His article that I got today is "Selling Ain't Easy". It had many interesting points about why someone would go into the sales field as a profession. My opinion about sales professionals is that you have to manage the most difficult person in the world to manage, yourself. You can sign up for Bill Lee's newsletters by going to http://www.billleeonline.com/ . There will be a prompt that will let you sign up for it.


From what I have seen and heard out and about doing my selling there are some nice jobs coming up but not in the quantity that was coming out a few short years ago. Prices keep going up and China seems to be needing more and more material for their big boom going on. You can find out more information from the company I work for monthly newsletter which is http://www.newsouthsupply.com/Newsletter/Nov07News.htm . It also has a nice article about good and bad management.

The second hardest thing to do in sales, and maybe in life, is to say "I screwed up." or add any applicable verb needed to get your point across. I found that when I make a mistake such as not ordering something as asked or forgetting some appointment that the best approach is the honest assertion that I messed up. It seems like people will forgive you and give you a second chance. You may even lose an order because of it but because of your honesty they will come back because they will trust you for the truth in your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes and since we are all familiar with our own mistakes then we are more likely to forgive and forget when someone else makes them. The only precaution is not to make too many mistakes. When that happens you end up being an incompetent buffoon that no one can trust to do the job adequately.