When we talk about sales, it’s natural for us to think of it as selling something for money. The truth, though, is that sales is really just the act of finding out how much your prospect (and you!) should value the items offered in the transaction. While that certainly does include the product or services you’re selling, it’s important to recognize that the money involved is also an item offered in the transaction.
Let’s say you’re buying a used car, and you can see some problems with it. Maybe the paint is bubbled in places, or it doesn’t have the greatest gas milage. In any case, when you negotiate the price, you’re essentially selling your own money. You are selling the value of the money you’re willing to pay for the car relative to the car itself.
We forget this simple fact because money is so ubiquitous in our transactions. We think of it as “the thing we’re trying to get” and when we spend it “the thing we’re losing.” We’re much more attuned to the gain and loss of money than we are of the products and services we use it to acquire or dispose of to acquire it. We forget that money is itself an economic good, subject to transaction and sale like any other.
A more direct example of this is in the sale of bonds, where you are literally spending your money on buying money at some future time. The sales in this case revolves around convincing your prospect that their bond, which is the principal amount and the coupon payments until maturity, are worth less than the amount of money you are willing to pay now. In either case, selling our own money is a sales process which we often forget, with our focus on the money itself.
testacr22