What makes You, You?

“Dare to be yourself.”
André Gide (1869–1951) French writer, Nobel Prize winner

I never intended to be a sales person. I was a marketing manager and provided sales support. A sales job came my way. I thought it would be fun. I took lots of sales assessments that firmly reported I did not have the right personality for sales. I'm not extroverted. I am analytical, thoughtful and follow through on initiatives I start. I'm not the life of the party but am the one who makes sure everyone is enjoying themselves. I am not motivated by money but expect to be paid fairly for what I produce.

I went to sales trainings that taught me the basics of sales:

• Identify prospects that are good targets for your service
• Connect with those prospects
• Listen to the prospects, understand their situation
• Analyze how your product/service can benefit them
• Present your solution by matching the features of your product/service to what they care about
• Offer pricing that is profitable to you and based on value to them
• Provide a contract that is fair to both parties
• Execute well
• Record all the information you captured about the prospect in a database (CRM) so that you can sell to them continuously
• Have fun with it.

One day as I was making my calls I thought "what makes Alicia, Alicia?" The answer, I thought, was "I will work just as hard making sure that you get good service and a quality product as I've worked to sign your business."

I started using that as my closing statement. The deals starting closing one by one.

What makes You, You?