The Hardest Sell

Riddle Me this:

When are you both the salesman and the customer?

The Answer?

When you’re selling to yourself.  (Hey...I didn’t say it was a GOOD riddle, but I promise it’s’ a relevant riddle.)

Most of us spend a lot of our time selling to others?  Don’t believe me?  Answer the following questions:

1.  Who here as ever sold for a living?

Okay, okay - a few of you are with me.  Let’s see if we can get a few others.

2.  Who here has ever convinced someone to go on a date with them?

And before you say that’s cheating - it’s absolutely not!  Some of us must do A LOT of selling to make that happen.

3.  Who here has ever had a job interview?

Interesting, that last one got just about all of you to on board.  However, a few of you are still on the fence, so let me ask this:

4.  Who here was ever a child?

Ding! Ding! Ding!  We have 100% of you accounted for.  If you were a child you inevitably bargained for a toy, negotiated a bedtime, or sold a sleep over.  

In each of the examples above - you (or your peers) were selling.  I’m going to throw something out there that may sound scary, but is 100% true:

Life is sales.

Each of us sells for a living - whether it’s making a marketing pitch, facilitating a meeting, convincing someone to date us, asking someone for their overdue report, or begging (or is it bribing?) our kids to eat their broccoli.  Selling is life.  

And yet, we never talk about the hardest sale of all.

Yourself.

Should I apply for this new job?

Will I ask this person out?

Can I lose the weight 

Should I quit my job?

What if I am successful?

All these are opportunities for us to sell to ourselves and often, we sell ourselves the wrong products: defeat, complacency, and failure.

So, here’s this week’s question: What are you selling yourself? Take a serious look at the “products” you are buying from yourself.  Are they like the ones listed above?  If so, what if you started shopping from a different store - the store that sells things like empowerment, courage, success, and bravery?

What could your life be like?  Sell (and buy) something different.

Sometimes the hardest person to sell to...is yourself. If you can win the sale there, you can win the sale anywhere.