How to Be Passionate About Sales

by Ben Lai | Aug 19, 2019

Transcript: Hi, this is Ben Lai from Sales Ethos. Today’s topic is how to become passionate about sales.

This is a strange sort of topic because in today’s day and age, most people giving advice about career will say, “Pursue your passion. Do whatever it is that you love doing and then you’ll never work a day in your life.” This is great advice for a very select few people, but if you apply this across the board, imagine how many wannabe musicians or YouTubers we would have? It is clearly not possible for all of us to do only what we like. That is the difference between an amateur and a professional. An amateur does what they want and what they like. A professional does what is necessary whether they want to or not.

But then we come across another barrier. If we’re doing what is necessary but not what we like, then it’s going to feel like a drudgery. So rather than getting into that situation, what I wanted to share with you is how you can become passionate about sales rather than expecting yourself to just enjoy whatever it is that you do.

Now, mind you, I did not start off my life or career with the expectation that I was going to like sales. I grew to love sales because of three main things.

How to be passionate about sales tip #1: Become excellent at it

The first thing is that I became excellent at it. That’s not to brag. I started off and I was terrible. In fact, I was scared to even pick up the phone. But I stuck at it and I determined within myself that I would become excellent at this profession. I would be the best that I could possibly be and that is how you can increase your passion in your chosen field. So whether you’re a shoe shiner, an accountant, or a sales person, the first step to becoming passionate about what you do is to become excellent at it.

How to be passionate about sales tip #2: Become knowledgable and curious

The second thing that you need to do is to become knowledgeable about your profession. Now, it sounds strange but when you become highly knowledgeable about a certain subject and you become curious about it, the curiosity helps to increase your emotional attachment to that very thing.

As a result of becoming interested and curious about the sales profession, I’ve had to look into various areas of study, including psychology, time management, personnel management, personal effectiveness, coaching, leadership, culture, all sorts of different topics in order to become effective at sales and sales training. The more immersed you become into your profession, the more passionate you will become about it.

Now before I go into the third point, quick offer to those of you who are sales managers or directors. A complementary one-hour session with me to talk about your top challenge in sales right. Complementary, a sit-down one-to-one meeting, I’ll give as much advice as I can in that one hour. The link is below, enter your details there to book it.

How to be passionate about sales tip #3: Focus on service to others

The third thing that you need to do to become passionate about what you do is to focus on the service that you’re providing to others. The only thing that is going to provide you with any life satisfaction are those things that contribute in some way to another human being. The greater extent to which you can connect your work to other people, the more meaning you will find in it.

This can be a challenge in and of itself. However, what I would suggest that you do if, let’s just say you’re selling machine parts. It can be very, very hard to associate that this machine part is going to help some other human being. But what you can do is follow the trail of value. The trail of value is essentially when my machine part goes into the machine, who does it benefit immediately? Then, as a result of that machine working perfectly, who else does it benefit? Who is the client of my client? If you follow the trail of value, you will see that it influences people in some sort of way.

Conclusion

To sum up, we need to become excellent at what we do; we need to become curious about what we do and to learn as much as we can about it; and thirdly, we need to focus on service to others and then you will become passionate about the sales profession.

What are your thoughts? What are the things that motivate you in the sales profession? Leave a comment below, click like and subscribe, and remember that integrity plus skills equals success.

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