I know this is cliche, but I was recently talking to my Dad about his career in sales and how it simple blossomed from his being involved in politics. My Dad had no background in “sales”, but he was using Non-sales selling principles for the 15 years he worked in Washington D.C. and the Michigan Senate.
We then started to go over activities I have been involved in and where I might have been doing some non-sales selling and not even realized it. Last semester I was the formal rush chair for me sorority. For those of you that do not know sorority rush can seem very forced and unnatural at times. You meet girls at forced events and try to generate conversation about their major and their life at Grove City so far. In order to be successful at Rush you need to make sure you are practicing many different kinds of sales practices.
1. You cannot have a generic pitch. When meeting girls for the first time you need to differentiate yourself and your group from the others. I learned this to be essential for getting girls interested!
2. Attunement- Al girls are different so when you are rushing them you need to take this into consideration. Some girls like coffee one on one time, some want to hang out in big groups, etc.. It is important to get to know the girl and how she is going to respond best.
3. Go for the no- When rushing it is important to give girls time to make decisions, but you do not want them stuck in limbo land forever. As a sorority it is important to be up front with rushes and you want them to make the decisions that is ultimately best for them. You don’t want them to say yes because they feel pressured, but because they really want to.
These are just a couple concepts I thought related to Rushing and sales. Just goes to show you can find non-sales selling all over!
BoweryJE22
It’s true that selling is big part of our lives whether we realize it or not. Sometimes it takes a class like this to make you stop and think about the non-sales selling that you do in your day to day activities or in some sort of situation. I’ve been doing a lot of interviews and a lot of these sales principles hold true in those situations as well.