“But what I offer is spiritual! I don’t like to sully it with selling,” my coaching client Jennifer said. It’s easy to be blissful and enlightened in a Himalayan cave; it’s more challenging to be present, generous, unattached, and available to serve in the midst of a sales conversation.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T FOR SELLING
I know many people who are spiritual seekers, and who look down their noses at people who sell. It’s all I can do to keep from saying, “Forget the mountaintop. Get a job selling cars, and you’ll be enlightened in half the time!”
My point of view is this: Whether you want enlightenment or just fistfuls of money—or both—selling will get you there.
SPIRITUAL SELLING
The Soul of Selling method shares four principles with most spiritual practices: quieting the mind, service, equanimity, and a balance between love and strength, generosity and steady will, humility and certainty, compassion and power.
Being mindful of these four qualities can turn each selling conversation into a meditation:
1. Quieting the mind. Soul of Selling Step 1 and Step 2 are both about quieting negative mental chatter. When your mind is quiet, you can be present with the other person, and also have some compassion for their mental chatter. Step 3 helps quiet the mind by giving you a Speaking Bank, so you never have to worry or wonder about what to say.
2. Service. Step 5 (Conduct the Honoring Sales Conversation) is a set of guideposts to help you honor, respect, and appreciate everyone with whom you speak—and at the same time, make “the ask,” handle their objections, and close the sale with grace and aplomb. Your focus is always on the other person.
3. Equanimity. Being unattached from whether or not people buy—just coaching them to a good decision—lets you be present to them in a spirit of generosity. You know that you will speak with as many people as necessary in order to keep your selling promise, so your only concern is making each conversation a joy and a service to others.
4. Balance. Yin and yang, love and power. In Step 4, you make a promise for specific sales results, no matter what. In Step 6, you keep going until you keep that promise. All the while, you are treating each person with compassion, generosity of spirit, kindness, and appreciation. Combining the guarantee for exact results with this honoring, gracious relationship is the secret behind the Soul of Selling. You are willing to have as many Honoring Sales Conversations as necessary to fulfill your promise—because each of these conversations is a joy. You are your best self, acting in a way that not only serves people, but also nurtures your own self esteem, personal growth, and spiritual enrichment.
SELLING IS LIFE
When we sell, hardly a moment passes without an opportunity to be more compassionate, more clear, and more grounded. As we learn these lessons, we can take them into every other aspect of life:
- The generous presence that we master while conducting the Honoring Sales Conversation can enrich relationships with parents, kids, friends, and colleagues.
- Learning to stand in the eye of the hurricane—appreciative, committed, and calm—teaches the capacity to be the grown-up in any situation, the one who is willing to make the whole experience rich for everyone involved and to have everybody win.
- The capacity to keep going until we get the result can turn into perseverance with painting a living room, putting up new kitchen cabinets, getting taxes done on time—and even surviving our kids’ teen years.
- Learning to close sales and bring people to a point of choice can translate into “closing” a vacation to the Bahamas or selling a house.
- When we can see the best in people, we can give the greatest gift that one human being can offer another.
THE SELLER WHO CHANGED THE WORLD
My selling heroine is Mother Teresa. I don’t know every thought that passed through her mind, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t use the six Soul of Selling steps—but I know these things about her:
- She had a vision based on authentic personal values, and overcame everything in the way of realizing that vision—including any fear she may have had about being uncomfortable, embarrassed, or rejected.
- She discovered how to energize her resources and speak effectively to people about giving her money to help the poor—even if she had to put aside her ego, be generous when she didn’t feel like it, and talk with people who may have intimidated her at first.
- She saw everyone she contacted as part of the divine, and she kept going until she got the result.
- Her compassion, combined with clarity and commitment to serving others, turned her selling into a spiritual practice.
Selling shaped Mother Teresa into a force of nature. She sold her vision, raised a great deal of money, and changed the world.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
You can do those same things, on as large a scale as you please. Let selling shape you into the person you’ve always wanted to be. Get out there with your vision and your service. Give them your all, and they will give you back more than you can possibly imagine.
What do you do to make selling a spiritual practice?
Good morning, dear Jodi. I think that cooipssamn shows up in my life in ways that are stressful and actually part of living with being over 60. It is very difficult to watch my husband growing older and to be aware of the fact that being 13 years younger, puts me in the position of having to do much more work cooipssamnately. Sometimes, that does not fit with my plans and other times, I am able to try a little tenderness. I understand the need to step back, observe, detach, and then move into action. Thanks for your sweet reminder.