I am not a big blogger... in fact, if I could live my entire life based on the clear witty advice given to me by fortune cookies I would, but sadly according to my wife (and Dr.) this is not the best approach - so keeping that in mind, I am going to keep this short and sweet (cookie sweet)

I am a programmer by nature, but was thrown into the wild world of sales ignorantly grabbing the challenge with both hands thinking quietly to myself... "You got this son... ", the cold truth is, I didn't have it. In fact I was so far from having it that I didn't even know what it looked like.

Sales is happening all the time... in fact every time you open your mouth you are selling something. It isn't always a product or service, sometimes it's just an idea... when dealing with children you are selling with your sanity being the prize... Here are 2 of the best 101 tips you can apply in sales.

Detachment...

At first glance, you might think that detachment is the art of not giving a crap. That's not entirely true. When you are detached, you actually do care but you don't emotionally commit to the outcome. This approach prevents desperation to leak through your conversation... for example, lets take an extremley highly pressured sales negotiation...

"For the love of God, PLEASE clean your room..." Reeks of desperation. Try selling that another way... "I don't care if you don't want to clean your room - clean it, and you get dessert. If you don't clean it - you go to bed now with no ice-cream."

In the first example, the negotiator (parent) reeks of desperation and the child (client) can sense it much like a dog can sense a sausage falling from the BBQ. The negotiation is over before it starts... you have shown your soft weak underbelly and you may as well crack open a bottle of wine right now and pour youself a tall glass of "I don't care anymore", which coincidently will go very well with your breakfast tomorrow morning of eggs and regret.

In the second example you play a hand of detachment. Let's face it - this can go eitherway anod you have to prepare for the fact that you may have to clean the room yourself. So in this case, you don't only demonstrate a high level of detachment but you put some value on the table in the for of ice-cream which brings us too our second point...

Give Your Clients Ice-Cream.

I know what you are thinking... "What happens if they don't like ice-cream" - just walk away. Don't trust anyone that can't be rewared with ice cream. For illustrative purposes, lets assume that your clients or kids aren't abnormal and love ice-cream as much as the rest of the civilized world... make sure that your proposition puts something of real value on the table. If it doesn't, don' be suprised if the conversation ends there.

Upvote this if you want to see Lesson 2: Client's that have to pass wind.