Hello, people around the world!
Have you ever wondered how can you use professional skills as an aid for your daily life? I did, and maybe you would like some of my own conclusions about sales and why you should use it for the interactions and way of being on a daily basis.
A few years ago, when I had no idea what I'm going to study, I've chose Management. Long story short, it didn't helped me in my professional career but made me look for other opportunities. This way I got to be involved in an NGO on the sales & fund raising department.
From the beginning, sales workshops and training were available for me, so I was exposed to all kinds of different information. One idea was stuck in my mind: Sales skills are useful anywhere, even you daily life. Some thoughts on how this applies:
Communication skills - Once you start reading and applying advices, one thing is for sure: To become better in the sales world you need to improve in communicating ideas, facts. A good start is to stick to the subject and express your thoughts logical and short. I've meet more than a few people trying to be smart and using more words than needed for a simple idea. Also, in this category, being clear in what you say, and using the appropiate language and words for the type of person you are speaking with, can help your daily meetings (from your mother to your colleagues). A good salesman can identify easily how the information can be delivered.
Negotiation skills - If you ever participated in a training on sales, of course you've heard about becoming a better at this. Well, is true until one point. Having the basic sales and communication skills can improve your negotiation skills. This is a mix of sales techniques and managing your target as something you want to sell. For 2 people to be happy about a negotiation, they must get to the middle area of a line (where one end is what one person want and the other end is what the other person wants). Your goal must be to identify the middle and see how is that working for you (are you ok with that?)
No more fear of public speaking - For me, this was the main advantage seen in sales that you can implement in your personal life. As an occupation, sales requires to get out of your comfort zone and speak out loud about ideas or yourself. As people, we are afraid to speak in public, especially about our ideas (probably because of the fear of being called stupid). But once you do this a number of times (and if you ever did a fund raising campaign), you get to trust yourself, and be aware that everyone has something they believe in. So your belief or dream is not inferior compared to the ideas or dreams of others.
Networking and talking to people you don't know yet - This was saved for last because, in my opinion, is your main advantage when you have some sales skills. After talking with hundreds or thousands of people, you will never be shy and miss opportunities to talk with others. You will never be afraid to ask that question (that sounds stupid in your mind). Why is that? Because you've probably gradually asked what before about what matters to you and everything was ok, so why not doing it again? And the second thing, having a network of people you can discuss with. Be that person who knows who can call if needs an advice in a certain domain.
We can also include some other advantages, maybe at an emotional level, or how you can connect with other people, but this is another subject. Some of you are born with these skills and they come natural, but most are not. The good thing is that everyone can learn. As a main conclusion, every professional skill can help you in your personal life, but sales skills can improve your abilities in expressing your ideas, creating a network and become better at following your dreams.
Think about it.
image credit: openclipart.org
