Personal Selling

You can learn every trick in the book, but personal selling power always comes down to charisma. No matter what strategies you have, no matter how many ways you know how to close a deal, no matter how much experience and knowledge you have of the product, it is worth nothing if you haven't mastered strategic selling techniques. Personal selling is about selling yourself. Personal sellers don't try to make a good impression about the product so much as they make a good impression about the person who their client is dealing with – themselves.   Whether you are working as a real estate agent selling homes, or putting up a personals ad trying to find a date, charisma is the end-all and be-all of one-on-one interactions.

I had my first taste of the true importance of personal selling not during my salesman job,but when trying to meet people online. There was an incredible gulf between the people who understood personal selling and the people who did not, and it was not just about self-confidence. It was about understanding your potential audience – the women – and what their needs were. Personal selling meant representing yourself as the ideal solution to those needs. Closing the deal was not the most important factor. In online personals dating, the point wasn't to get a date. If you could make a good impression, they would ask for a date themselves.

It may sound shocking to some, but personal salesmanship follows the same principles. In personal selling, closing the deal should be the icing on the cake. By the time you get to the end of your pitch, the customer should be with you. A good salesman will have the customer so enthralled that, even if he does not make his closing sales pitch, they will inquire about whether or not they can get the product.

This is not because the product will look so good, but because the salesman looks so good. If the salesman seems like the kind of person who will listen to their problems, then by extension the product is the kind of product that will solve them. Personal selling is about creating an impression of yourself which mirrors how you wish for the product to be perceived. I have taught personal selling seminars for years, and I have never once met someone who could sell themselves, but could not sell a product that they were pitching.