The Truth About Sales

There’s this reality that we’re all living in that people aren’t talking about enough. Are you ready for it? Everyone is trying to sell you something. But in all seriousness, you’re going to want to keep reading because by the end, you’re going to have a better understanding as to why this idea isn’t as big of a deal as you think it is and how to use it to your advantage in your life.

Phase #1: Understanding this principle that everyone’s trying to sell you something.

Literally everyone is always trying to sell you something, especially in a super capitalistic society like in most developed countries. Think about it when you’re watching your favorite YouTubers video, an advertiser is competing with another advertiser to get in front of your eyeballs for that seven to 15 second ad, or when you go to Costco and you used to get those free samples prior to the global situation.

Costco was selling you on a free trial of that product to get you to buy that product. Even if you were to look at your phone, for instance, you’d probably find that you’ve downloaded your fair share of free apps that have paid plans with some more features included. For me, it happened as recently as my latest dental visit in which my dentist was telling me that I needed to keep an eye out for my upper left tooth.

This is simply my dentist preparing to pre-sell me work on future work that might become an issue if I don’t keep up with good brushing habits. So the first thing you really need to understand when it comes to the truth about sales is that everyone is going to be trying to sell you something. Once you recognize this, we can move on to phase number two.

Phase #2: Understanding everybody’s perspective.

Once we understand the concept that everyone is trying to sell us something, we need to try to understand both the buyer and sellers perspectives of a particular transaction. In other words, we need to understand what’s driving both parties in a sale. That way we can begin to leverage those in our conversation.

In this situation, we want to think about what our sellers stands to benefit from engaging in this deal with us. Is it money, fame, pride status, or something else? Do we even feel like it’s a fair exchange? It’s really important that we try to understand everybody’s perspective because without that understanding, we might get taken advantage of.

For example, if you went to your doctor and your doctor were to try to get you on some blood pressure medication, as opposed to first starting the conversation, asking you about your diet or potential fitness changes you can make in your life, then your doctor might not necessarily have your best interests in mind, as opposed to their interests in mind.

By better understanding the nature of every single sale interaction that we have, we can better position ourselves and leverage what we have and what we don’t have. It’s really important that aside from just understanding the other side’s perspective, you’re going to also want to think about getting more research from other sources.

For example, if you were to do this with your next eye doctor’s visit, when they’re trying to get you to use your frame credit from your insurance on their frames, you might do your own research and realize that there are a ton of online shops where you can get way more bang for your buck. The biggest thing I want you to remember when it comes to phase two of the truth about sales is that you need to get everything in order. Do your own due diligence and understand everybody’s perspective.

Phase #3: Leverage and ask

What this is all about is, this is about you knowing what you’re worth and getting what you’re worth.

To do this, I recommend that you think about all the assets that you might have, think about what skills or knowledge you might have or what things you could possibly offer to others. By taking stock of what we already have for ourselves, we can better position ourselves when there are sales opportunities in the future.

So for example, let’s say that we had a free version of an app and we wanted to get the paid plan of the app, but we didn’t want to pay that paid membership. Well, one way around that could be to go on YouTube and look up the paid plan reviews of that app. And you might notice that there is a gap in the market in which there aren’t that many reviews about the pro plan.

So instead of paying for the pro plan with your own money, you might choose to leverage an asset you might have, like your YouTube channel. Even if you had a small YouTube channel, you could reach out to the creator of that app and ask them if they would potentially find value from you creating a video on their pro plan.

By doing this, you potentially line up a win-win situation for both sides, because from your end, you’re saving money from having to spend money on their pro plan, whereas on their end, they’re getting more social proof for future users and potentially getting introduced to new users that they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.

Without spending all that much time you might have just saved yourself another monthly subscription. The reason why I offer this example is because I’ve actually done it myself. I run a series of niche sites and in order to get free product in the past, I’ve left a line in the articles that essentially goes along the lines of, “Hey, if you’re interested in getting your product reviewed, drop us a line.” That link leads to a contact us page and that’s soft ask is enough to have gotten me a couple of free samples in the past.

With very minimal salesmanship, I’ve created new opportunities for myself simply by having a line and articles for potential vendors to reach out to me. In other words, I’ve leveraged my asset of websites that generate traffic with vendors that want to get in front of new customers.

You can do this with pretty much anything in your life. In fact, I recently negotiated 10% off my monthly rent with my landlord for the remainder of my lease. Simply by citing the global situation and other macro factors that I understood about the market. I plan on sharing that story in another article.

One of the keys to success when it comes to getting the most out of leveraging your ask is creating win-win situations. Even in the case where you can’t create an absolute win-win situation, try to present it in a favorable light for the other party.

Big takeaways

There are two things I want you to remember from this article:

  1. The first one is to remember that everyone is always trying to sell you something. Even for example, when you clicked into this video, I had to sell you in the beginning on this idea that there was a truth about sales.
  2. The second thing I want you to remember is phase number three, which is to make sure that you are making your asks and getting what you deserve. Ultimately, once you’ve understood phase number two of understanding the other person’s perspective and leverage that into phase number three in your ask, you will get more out of all the different opportunities that life has to offer you.

If you found this article helpful, be sure to check out my YouTube channel to get new videos every single week I’ll help take you from zero to self-starter as you grow your business, get more customers, and hone your business acumen. Also, feel free to share this with anybody that you know that might from reading this.