Helping Introverts Achieve Success in Selling

With the unbelievably difficult jobs market situation confronting Americans today, many introverts might be facing the situation of taking any sales job in order to make ends meet. In reviewing the current openings on Monster and Craigslist in my home area, I see a great many commission-only sales jobs looking for “closers, aggressive types, winners and people not afraid to use the phone.”

If you have read my book or consider yourself an introvert, I would caution you from pursuing these type jobs out of desperation and resignation. Believe me, I have tried it and found it frustrating and ultimately useless. Here’s why:

Cold calling is, as they say, a numbers game. The more calls you make, the more your chances of making a sale. I like to put it another way. When an introvert takes a cold calling job it is a race between the inevitable success of the cold calling by making thousands of calls and the introverts ability to withstand rejection, humiliation and most likely self-loathing. It is simply against an introverts nature to make call after call waiting for the one person who might be open to your sale. I am not saying it can’t be done, but that it can’t be done by a true introvert.

Your employer has no investment in you other than a few hours (if that) of perfunctory training. In most of these jobs, if you don’t make a sale you don’t get paid any money. Why should the employer care about you or anyone else manning the phones when you can be replaced tomorrow with someone who is more aggressive, a better closer.

As I said in the book, with cold calling you rarely get an opportunity to show your assets of knowledge and empathy that might lead to long-term sales in other situations.

So what do you do? You need a job and some income. At least try to find sales jobs with these characteristics:

A minimum salary for making calls. This gives your employer at least some stake in your success.

A business-to-business product. At work people are much more likely to at least listen to your pitch.

An opportunity to write your own script. We don’t all speak alike and forcing a sales person to read exactly from a script is a warning sign that the employer doesn’t trust you or is trying to conceal something from the potential customer.

Good luck finding a sales job that works for you. They are out there and will be increasing as our economy comes back.

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At first glance, the network marketing or Multi-level Marketing business would appear to be anathema to more introverted individuals. After all, historically the business was thought to be all about herding relatives and acquaintances into a questionable scheme of selling useless to non-existent products. But just as that negative perception of network marketing has been replaced by recognition of its legitimacy and unlimited potential, so too the factors that made it an unattractive option for introverts are a thing of the past.

Today’s introvert marketer can use the internet to find and recruit new team members from among the millions of people looking for their own business opportunities. Rather than relying on cold calls or annoying neighbors, budding business people have a wide variety of solutions to the problem of finding interested individuals to talk to and recruit. Hundreds if not thousands of programs are available to help internet entrepreneurs whether they are new to the internet or savvy online marketers.

Full disclosure – This introvert is part of a network marketing opportunity. Take a look if you are interested Here.

But even after potential partners have raised their hands to indicate their interest in network marketing, introverts can use the ever-expanding capabilities of e-mail to continue the on-line conversation and move the sales effort forward. As a result, marketers can spend more time sharpening their writing skills and less time trying to perfect their phone capabilities and making presentations to large groups. In other words, in the new world of network marketing you don’t necessarily have to be a born salesperson to be successful.

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