Prepping for Sales

I just sold my brother a tennis ball.

Okay, I didn’t actually sell it to him, but I did convince him that he needed it and got him to ask me for it.  But still, success.

I was watching a Praxis video on choosing a role at a start-up company, and what I’ve heard a lot going through the first few weeks of Praxis is how sales is one of the most valuable skills you can have.  If you can sell something, including yourself, then you’ll basically always have a job.

Here’s the thing, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what my skill set is, and what I can put those skills towards.  Originally I wasn’t really interested in sales, but now I think I need to go for it.  It scares me a little bit.  Cold-calling seems like a set-up for rejection, and I won’t pretend like I enjoy that.

However….

I’m not one to back down from a challenge, or from my own fear.  There are a few things that terrify me, they are: scary things under the water that I can’t see (let’s blame marine biology and shark movies for that), getting a finger or toe cut off, those walk-through metal detectors are airports (I couldn’t tell you why, I think it’s my only irrational fear), and rejection.  

Still, I have faced (almost) all of these fears multiple times in my life.  I still go swimming in the ocean and in lakes.  I have never lost a finger or toe, but I still use knives in the kitchen and I like to be barefoot.  I go through metal detectors when I need to, and no one can go through life without facing rejection at some point.  So why would taking on sales be any different?

As an experiment, I decided to try it out on my brother.  He has his own dog, so I grabbed a tennis ball I saw on the ground and went to go talk to him.  Tossing the ball in the air (with the dog and my brother right next to me), I asked him a couple questions.  How do you like to play with Mel (that’s the dog’s name)?  Do you think she might like this tennis ball?  She’s looking right at it as I’m throwing it, maybe you should try playing with her using this.  

It worked!  He took the ball from me and offered it to Mel.  Success!  

Maybe it’s not the same thing, but maybe it is.  I showed him something I had and convinced him that he needed it.   He claimed he was just “testing it out,” which is almost just as good.  

I’ll try this experiment a few more times with different things and different family members.  I think it could be fun and help me test different tactics and leading questions.  Who knows?  Maybe sales is exactly what I’m good at.