If you do start your own business, apart from not running out of money, the only other thing that matters is sales. You’re going to have to make them. Lots of them. Over and over again.

When I started my own business in 1992, I had never done any selling. Well actually, that’s not entirely true. I had had some jobs prior to that, so clearly I had sold myself to some employers.

And so in fact, if you think you’ve got no selling experience, then this may not be entirely true. If you’ve ever had any kind of job, temporary, permanent, whatever – then you already have some selling experience and, I think you’ll agree, that’s a start.

When I started my own thing, sales was the thing that concerned me most. Actually, ‘concerned’ would be the understatement of the year. I was terrified at the prospect of having to go out and sell; terrified that my livelihood would depend on my ability to do this.

And whether you’re terrified of sales or not, sales should concern you. If you run your own business, then without sales there is no business. And if you work for an organization, you’re still going to have to sell – sell your ideas, sell your proposals and plans, sell yourself, if you go looking for a pay rise or a promotion, for example.

These are the things I wish I’d known about selling.

People don’t buy what you sell, they buy what you believe

I’m astonished that more people haven’t cottoned on to this. I have to stress too that I didn’t figure it out – until I came across this Simon Sinek TED talk.²⁸ Let me give you the gist of his message.

I’m astonished that companies spend billions of dollars on advertising every year and that the vast bulk of that money is completely down the drain. I’m astonished that clearly highly paid and highly intelligent people haven’t either figured this out or that somebody hasn’t told them.

Recently I heard a radio ad for a certain brand of car. The ad went on to say that this car was the fastest growing car brand in Ireland. Yawn! Who cares? But, if you think about it, the vast majority of ads are like this – they talk about certain aspects of the product or service being sold – it’s got better technology or features, the prices are down, it’s new and so on and so on.

But who cares about most of this stuff? What people care about . . . the thing that gets people passionate . . . excited . . . eager to buy . . . reaching for their purse or wallet or credit card . . . is none of these things. It’s not the spec sheet of the product or service you’re selling. The thing that gets them eager to buy is why you’re in business. Why are you passionate about what you do and why does that make a difference?

Ryanair – like them or loathe them – they’re passionate about safe, cheap air travel. Tiffany, the jewellers – they’re passionate about romance. You can buy rings from millions of places. You can only buy a Tiffany ring in one place. Apple – they’re passionate about building great products that challenge the status quo. This is the heart of Sinek’s message.

As I mentioned, I started my business, ETP (www.etpint.com) in 1992. ETP is a project management training and consulting company. Project management was and still is a field that is crammed with competitors – everybody from the big consulting companies to the guy who buys a book and suddenly starts offering training. Every competitor I’ve ever come across sells project management as rocket science – it’s complicated, sometimes incredibly so.

My hunch was that it wasn’t complicated at all – that it was just common sense. And so that was what I believed – then and now. And that was what I started to sell. This gave me my USP – Unique Selling Proposition. Everything flowed from that.

People don’t buy what you do – they buy why you do it. They buy your passion for your offering.

Figure that out and your selling will be pretty straightforward.

Love your customers

There’s an old gag that goes, ‘The secret to successful selling is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ll be really great at it’. Like all good gags, it has a germ of truth in it. The secret to successful selling is sincerity. Not faked but real.

You have to love your customers.

I don’t mean this in some kind of abstract way – in the way, for example, that all companies say they love their customers. Neither do I mean it as I love them because their money pays my bills and gives me my income. I mean it that I love my customers. I love them as though they were my friends, relatives, loved ones.

When I come across a potential new customer, I love them. I want to help them. I want to make their lives better and happier – and I know that what I sell can do that. It hurts me to see them suffering because of badly run projects, the associated late nights and weekends and what all of that does to their lives. If this potential customer were my wife or child, I wouldn’t want them to suffer like that for a moment longer.

That is how I love them.

Recently I had a bad experience with a particular travel booking website. On those rare occasions – and they have been rare – when somebody has had a bad experience with our company, we have not just increased the love – we have love bombed them.

By comparison, I’ve heard nothing back from them. They don’t love me. And as a result, I will not be buying anything from them again.

You gotta have daily targets

I remember days – when we were starting out – where we had no customers, no money due to come in, no sales in the pipeline, personal and company debts piling up. It’s hard to drag yourself out of bed in those situations.

These days, I still do cold calling. Anyone who’s ever done it will tell you that it’s not the most life-enhancing thing you can do. But it has to be done. That pesky tree has to be shaken.

And, as we said already, sales are the lifeblood of your company. You can never stop.

And so, you have to have targets.

I’m going to make so many calls today. I’m going to make one more today than I made yesterday. I’m going to try to achieve one (or two or ten or a thousand or whatever it is) sales every day. I have to hit this target this month. To do that I have to do so many sales every week and that translates into so much sales activity I have to do today. Targets. Targets. Targets.

The day is where you’ll win it or lose it. Do the sales activity – make the calls, send the emails, have the meetings – every day and you’ll be fine.

So, in conclusion: be passionate about what you’re selling. Love the people you sell to – make their lives better by what you give them. And have targets – especially for those times when the going gets tough.