Down the Rabbit Hole
East of the Ozarks
Rain 43 Degrees
7:36 a.m.
Years ago, during a particularly aimless part of my life, I spent three months working at a car lot in Scottsdale Arizona.
To be blunt, I sucked.
In fact, there was only ONE thing I seemed to be able to do successfully. And that was to sell Corvettes to old white guys.
Despite my struggles, this experience was the first real education I ever received in selling.
What did I learn?
I learned that most people are terrible at doing this, and that included me.
My first problem was that I had no interest in cars. My second problem was that I was scared to death of everyone and everything.
Unfortunately, both of those issues paled in comparison to my biggest problem, which was that I thought “selling” was a thing you did to someone.
What I SHOULD have learned from my experience on the lot, but didn’t until many years later, is this:
NO ONE LIKES TO BE SOLD.
Do you?
So from a common sense standpoint then, it makes no sense to offer the world something it does not want.
But if you’re not selling, won’t you just go out of business?
No you won’t. Not if you replace selling with an alternative. Something that is far more effective. And, most importantly, something people actually want.
That “thing” is serving.
Serving is an act centered around solving problems for humans. It is committed to providing the right solution for a specific problem.
Serving means that a sale is the natural byproduct of a problem being solved.
This provides a level of emotional detachment to result that, if you’ve ever been in sales, you know is extremely effective.
Instead of focusing on what you want directly (a sale), you focus on getting your prospect what THEY want (a solution), the natural byproduct of which gives you what you want.
How do I know it works? Because this is how I feed my 10 children.
While it might seem, at first glance, that this shift in perspective is little more than semantics, like we’re applying lipstick to a pig in order to get it invited to more parties, this is a fundamental shift in approach.
It is a shift that changes your energetic state. And that changes everything that comes after.
This affects how you think, speak, act and work with those you choose to serve.
It affects how you talk about what you do, how you create the marketing for what you do and every other part of your enterprise.
Most importantly, it removes the feeling of NEED that most salespeople project and replaces it with WHOLENESS, which is extremely attractive to humans.
Selling is need.
Serving is giving.
A completely different energy flow.
Based on my experience, humans can FEEL this at a level far below conscious thought.
Best of all, no human anywhere has ever screamed from the top of their lungs, “Stop serving me so much! This is too helpful…I can’t stand it! Never set foot on my doorstep again!”
If this is the first time you’re hearing about this “crazy” idea of giving up selling, you might wonder what this looks like in the real world.
Well, I recorded a presentation about my thoughts on this approach a few years ago that walks through that.
If you are curious about how to give up “selling” forever and do something more effective and lucrative, feel free to watch it.