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Can't sell or won't sell?

By Adrian Priddle (September 2004 Issue)
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‘I joined this firm to be an accountant, not a salesperson!’ To coin an old phrase, if I had a penny for every time I heard this …well, I wouldn’t be able to retire but I could at least go out for an evening meal! This is one of several statements put forward by professionals at training courses I have run for why they should not engage in selling or business development activity. The statements fall into two camps: those claiming there is a skill or knowledge gap they cannot possibly bridge; and those who have built a rationale that justifies them not having to. The first group of people believe they can’t sell, whereas the second simply won’t. Both represent statements of the individual’s attitude to selling.

Currently, there is a lot of high quality training available to help people who need to develop selling behaviours or techniques. These interventions, generally courses or workshops, may develop new skills. However, will they help individuals with what may be their biggest barrier, their own attitudes to selling?

Where these attitude barriers surface, the benefit of skills improvement training is lost because the individual will disengage. I am sure we have all read the body language of participants on a training programme who just cannot get past an objection they have. If it’s about their personal attitude it can be sufficiently important to them that they will not proceed further.

FACTORS AFFECTING ATTITUDES TO SELLING
While attitude is built from a number of factors relating to each individual (for example, family background, current environment, previous work and life experience), there are three factors that are common in many thought processes.

Factor 1
The first factor affects all of us and is what I can best term as the British perception of selling. As a child, I remember that my parents always had a negative perception of people who phoned them to sell kitchens or who knocked on the door to sell vacuum cleaners. This was because they were being pestered about something they didn’t want, and this image of selling stayed with me for a long time ...

 

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