If the person who designed the pen were selling it, the degree of
personal content is much higher; thus it’s tougher for the designer
to deal with the possibility of rejection. To you, the book you are
reading is ink, paper, and a cover; as such, it would be easier for
you to sell than for us, assuming equal sales ability. When I (PL)
began selling Money Is My Friend, the high degree of personal con-
tent made it very uncomfortable for me to hear no from a prospec-
tive customer.
Selling becomes more emotionally intense and therefore more
difficult for beginners as you move up and to the right on the dia-
gram. The farther you move from the lower left corner, the tougher
it gets. Emotional intensity makes selling difficult because it draws
your awareness inside, distracting you from what customers are
telling you.How to Apply These Emotional Dynamics
to Learning to SellThere are generally two ways to learn anything. You can jump into
the deep end to sink or swim, or you can learn a little at a time, per-
haps starting with a flotation device in the kiddy pool, improving
gradually until your stroke becomes strong and graceful enough to
challenge ocean waves. Even if you learned to swim through the
sink-or-swim method, you probably could have a better stroke if you
had learned in a more gradual way, simply because crisis and panic
can’t produce an environment for optimal learning.
Consider all the things you have learned to do. Very few of them
were taught by the sink-or-swim method. For this reason, we will be
starting in the kiddy pool of selling. Figure 13.2 shows the sales abil-
ity diagram from Figure 13.1, but this time it includes three num-
bered, shaded areas.Mistakes of the New Salesperson
Most people starting their own business can’t afford a store or fac-
tory. This prevents them from selling products, so they sell services.
Nor can they afford to hire employees at the outset, so they sell the
service and perform it themselves. The degree of difficulty of sell-
ing a service that you perform yourself puts you somewhere in the
darkened area 1 on Figure 13.2. The fact that you are offering a ser-
vice and that it possesses high personal content makes your initial
endeavors in this area more difficult than they need to be.214 Learning to Sell the Easy Way