For the past few months, I have been conflicted with the idea of traveling abroad. Originally, I wanted to do a winter travel course with my friend Abbey for the class SSFT. I liked this idea because I only had to focus on one class, it was about 2 weeks give or take, so it wasn’t that long, and going to Europe has been a goal of mine for quite a while. It is also an opportunity that not a lot of people get to have at such a young age, so I wanted to take it. However, the winter course ended up not happening or being an option for either of us. That left me thinking that I was never going to go and I had given up the idea of going after break.
Not too long ago, my friend Christa brought the idea up to me again and mentioned that she also wanted to go abroad. We were talking about potential opportunities and places we could go. At first, I was totally opposed to doing a whole semester abroad because it would be a long time without seeing my family and other friends back home. But Christa had other ideas and put in a lot of work to convince me to go a whole semester! Looking back on it now, I remember her pulling up different European cities and selling me on them. Some were more difficult for her to do so, and others I swayed more easily. I could tell she was using Sandler rule #18 which is, don’t paint seagulls in your prospect’s pictures, without even knowing she was using it. She wasn’t pressuring me into it and avoided her personal viewpoint because I already knew she wanted to do a whole semester. Instead, she used phrases like “you know what might be nice…”, “picture this…” or “you may what to think about this…”.
At first it was just an exciting idea to think about. But after those conversations, she really sold me on the idea. Now we are currently working with the global programs to get this adventure set up!
RMcIlwain
I am so glad you’re trying to make going abroad work! I only wish I had been able to sell you on it sooner so you could go with Emily and me!! Do you know where you’re going to go yet? I just know you’ll have the most wonderful time and I’ll definitely be documenting everywhere I go so that you can have some recs beforehand:)
That’s so awesome! Getting sold on studying abroad is definitely a big deal. What really sold me on it was when I had a professor tell me that she had seen a lot of students decide not to study abroad because they didn’t want to miss out on life at GCC, but she had never had a student who did decide to study abroad wish they had stayed instead!
That’s so cool that you’re going abroad! I definitely would love to do it at some point before I graduate. That’s really cool that you picked up on sales techniques being used on you. She wasn’t using them necessarily as a tactic but the way she naturally related and empathized with your viewpoint made her convincing a lot more effective.