You did it; you decided to learn from one of the best teachers possible, and that journey of learning and discovery starts now.
Welcome to your first lesson.
NOTE: Every lesson contains, amongst other parts, exercises and the reasons for the activities in those exercises. Whenever possible, additional reading will be suggested.
What is selling?
The Oxford dictionary offers three main definitions for selling, the first of which is to give or hand over something in exchange for money. And this first description is likely the most popularly accepted given the context of our everyday discourse – when people talk about selling something they are usually referring to exchanging a product or service for money.
For this project, however, we will focus on the second definition offered by the dictionary, which is to persuade someone of the merits of something. That definition includes similar ideas like, and this is a significant one for our purposes, to persuade someone to accept or to bring someone around to take something.
To get the best out this training, we suggest that you also stick to the second definition of selling. Remember as I said in my previous article – Who Is Kolt Curry And Why You Should Let Him Teach You To Sell – the idea is to teach you how to sell yourself so that selling your products and services becomes a natural part of life.
With that in mind, let us look at one of the basic principles of selling: rapport building or establishing trust.
Remember, as we go forward that you are building trust with a person you might not have met before, and in a short amount of time. We will talk about maintaining and regaining trust in a different lesson.
Exercise 1 (Level: Basic)
I want you to do two things now: first, think about what makes you trust other people. And be honest about this. What tells you that you can trust someone? It can be how they look or sound; the way they look at you, etcetera. Take your time with this part of the lesson and remember that different people will have different answers; also, the number of responses you provide is particular to you. Make sure to write these answers down; I have saved worksheets for you here, but you can use any method to keep track of these lessons. Some people claim that writing information by hand helps them remember it; again, this part is up to you.
Second, do your best to remember the last time you convinced someone of something – a time when you persuaded another person to do or believe what you needed to do or feel. I need to reiterate the need for honesty in these exercises, failure to observe this need will yield adverse results. This experience of persuasion does not need to be too impressive, it can be something as simple as having someone do a small favour for you, and as involved as possible.
Reasons
The best persuasion artists have a keen understanding of how our emotions control our behaviour; they know how to trigger those emotions and use them to control us, in short, they know what buttons to push.
The idea behind Exercise 1 is to acquaint you with the basic emotional reactions associated with the attitude of trust. This exercise aims to help you begin to understand the positive feelings of confidence in, and of connection with someone else, and to associate these feelings with their corresponding brain states. Yes, I understand that last sentence reads complex, and its intention, in turn, is to elicit in you respect for the complex process of persuasion.
Make sure to complete the exercises suggested here before moving onto the next lesson. Let us know how this works out for you.
Suggested Reading
What is trust: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hot-thought/201810/what-is-trust
On the emotional character of trust: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27504185?seq=1
See you soon.
Peyton Dracco | Entrepreneur Author 