Honestly, we sell our friends on movies that we really enjoyed and we sell business people we meet on not doing business with companies where we've had a bad experience. We sell our bosses on the merits of promoting us and we sell our customers on the merits of doing business with us. We sell our family members on getting together for a family reunion - or not - and we sell acquaintances on why this particular restaurant would be a good one for them to check out.

So, if it's already happening all of the time, shouldn't I be better at it? In short, I've learned that the answer to that question is yes, which is why I'm reading the book I'm currently reading. I was reading a definition of salesmanship that I thought might be of benefit to many others, so I'm sharing it here in hopes that you might get something out of it. If you do, you might want to invest in the book. Just saying...

Jean Beltrand has given five definitions of salesmanship, as follows:

FIRST: Selling is the ability to make known your faith, goods, or propositions to a person or persons, to a point of creating a desire for a privilege, an opportunity, or an interest.

SECOND: Selling is the ability of professional and public men to render services, assistance, and cooperation, to a point of creating a desire on the part of the people to remunerate, recognize, and honor.

THIRD: Selling is the ability to perform work, duties, and services as an employee, to a point of creating a desire on the part of an employer to remunerate, promote, and praise.

FOURTH: Selling is the ability to be polite, kind, agreeable, and considerate, to a point of creating a desire upon the part of those you meet to respect, love and honor you.

FIFTH: Selling is the ability to write, design, paint, invent, create, compose, or accomplish anything, to a point of creating a desire upon the part of the people to acclaim its possessors as heroes, celebrities, and great men.

These definitions are very broad. They might easily cover a great variety of all human activity. The whole of any life is one long, unbroken chain of sales endeavor.

The newly born babe is a salesman! When it wants food, it yells for it and gets it! When it is in pain, it yells for attention and gets that too.

The antiquated language of the book notwithstanding, the thing that I like most about this passage is that when we look at selling in this light, it is clear that we really are always selling, and it is also clear that it would be good for all of us to take an honest look at how good we are at it and whether we could use some improvement. I know that I can't sell my work direct to customers or to galleries or on the Internet if I don't understand the principles of selling. I also know that the more I know about selling, the more effectively I can sell without having to be pushy or yell for attention. We all know how well that goes over!

I also realized that I needed to shift some of my underlying beliefs about sales and salesmanship. I've been working on that aspect since starting to learn from the folks associated with Peak Potentials, since they're always saying that if you don't like being sold to, you don't like selling, and you won't have much business. It's true. I've seen the results of those beliefs at work in my own life, so it's been worth the effort to change my beliefs. Perhaps you have too. What will you do about it? Or, are you comfortable where you are?

Just one more question for those of you who think that you're comfortable where you are: Do you get that if you want things in your life to change, you are going to have to change things in your life? Really. If you keep doing things the same way you always have, then you're going to keep getting the same results. Really. Expecting to get different results when you keep doing things the same way is a great definition of insanity. So, make a change somewhere in your life and see what happens...