How You Learn to Sell

I remember how my old man “taught” me to swim. He launched me into the deep end of the swimming pool. I think I was four years old. I replaced the water I was taking in through my mouth and nose with tears as I struggled to tread water. By the time I paddled over to the side, I was over the shock. And I was over my fear of the water. I still couldn’t swim, but I was in the water tooling around.

You don’t learn to swim by reading books about swimming. You learn to swim by getting in the water, struggling against yourself, and struggling against the water. Swimming is completely unnatural. Until you learn to swim.

You can’t learn to ride a bicycle by reading a How To book on cycling. You have to throw your leg over the bicycle and start riding. You have to struggle against yourself, against gravity, and find your balance. You fall over and skin your hands and knees from time to time. Then your up on the bike, and in my case, free at last.

Experience is a great, if sometimes brutal, teacher.

Experience is a Great (and Brutal) Teacher

Think about experience as a teacher. Would you allow a heart surgeon to perform your heart surgery having read all of the books but never having opened a chest?

You don’t learn to sell by reading a book. You learn to sell by trying to win clients, struggling against yourself, and bumping up against the challenges that brings. You learn to sell by studying your wins, and by taking lessons from your losses.

You learn from your experiences. You can’t learn to sell by reading books.

Books are Great (and Forgiving) Teachers

You can’t learn to sell by reading books. You can only learn to sell a lot better by reading books.

Reading exposes you to the ideas and principles to go along with your experience. Reading provides you with a greater understanding of why what’s working for you works, and it helps you understand why what’s not working isn’t.

When you combine reading with your experience, you are able to uncover ideas, to connect them to your experience, and to make distinctions. You get new ideas to incorporate into your sales game. And, you can learn from other people’s mistakes, saving you from having to learn by repeating what someone else has already learned for you.

You learn to sell through experience. You learn to sell better by combining your experience with reading and studying.