Don’t Hard Sell
Don’t ever use the hard sell.
You read that right. I fly in the face of all of the career/personal success gurus, websites, articles, and books that teach you otherwise. Those that would tell me I am not ahead today because I don’t use a hard sell. I am not as far ahead as I should be, but I will not use a hard sell. Neither should you. I repeat. Do not use a hard sell tactic to get something you want. Never. Not one time, ever.
Why do I utter such marketing sacrilege? It’s simple; people who engage in hard selling are obnoxious pricks and are forever remembered as such. Period, end of discussion.
Here’s an example. I’m sure you know this guy.
I was at a networking event a few weeks ago. An alleged internet “website optimizer”, with a stack of business cards the size of his head cornered some poor woman, his card out before he even reached for her hand or asked her name. I never heard her name, and neither did he, because he was too busy selling, and spouting off at lightening speed:
“Your goal is to make money…You need a website…My goal is to make a website…but not just any website…an optimized website…a website that knows how to work the internet…and what’s the internet…the internet is exposure…and what’s exposure…exposure is money…and what’s money…money is whatever you want it to be and I’m going to help you get more of it…more than you thought you could have…what I want to do for you is…”
Recognize this jackass now? That is the hard sell. If you are like me you are far Too XYZ to fall for that as a customer, so don’t employ it yourself. Even if you haven’t yet found solid business relationships, you can’t bring yourself to be this guy.
Yet, shouldn’t you? Isn’t that the way to get ahead? No.
Hard sells are only of use when dealing with the gullible, the desperate, or the impulsive. It is those groups that give the false impression that the hard sell is effective. Yet, such people are going to buy something from somewhere anyway no matter what the pitch is. You may get to the front of the line by being an ass, but the line has nobody of worth in it.
And of course that is not truly building a relationship. It’s just selling. There is a difference. If you want to build business, talk to people like they are people, not like they owe you a living. Be remembered by a potential employer, or customer, or client, or network connection as a person they may actually want to talk to over and over again, not as “the asshole who sold me my air conditioner.” For while the latter may be someone who makes a string of single sales, the former is making an investment in people.
Be an investor. Don’t hard sell.
Band-Aids
“It will work for a while,” goes the old cliché, “but it’s just a band-aid.”
So? We need to embrace band-aids, not avoid them.
I agree of course that some problems are so serious that very particular steps must be taken to fix them. But the problem with the whole “it’s just a band aid” warning is that it overlooks something.
For the right things, band-aids work. And they work just fine.
One problem I think people that are Too XYZ have is that they reach a point, (as I often do) where they feel that they must organically fix, alter or “heal” all of the weird stuff about themselves. And that until they can make a quirk or deficiency go totally away, they are somehow less mature. They say to themselves;
“Because most people like the bar scene, and get most of their relationships or sex from there, I need to find a way to also be comfortable with the bar scene.”
“I like to read, but only cheap romance novels. It will best serve my intellectual reputation if I find a way to enjoy the classics.”
“I need to find a way to write a better resume for myself, because I just can’t seem to get it right.”
Those would be the three complicated or stressful solutions to these situations. But all three also have band-aid options.
One could meet people online. Read the Study Notes or abridged versions of the classics. If you have the money pay somebody to write a resume for you and be done with it.
Ask yourself if the fundamental problem you are trying to solve is really going to have far reaching consequences to your conscience or your safety. If it isn’t, forget the rebuilding process. Stick a band-aid on there. Take the short cut. Few will care. And if they do care, and start to preach “The band-aid” sermon to you, tell them you would prefer to spend your energies on improving things you can control. Such as avoiding negative people. Then walk away.
I am a prime example of this. I am a terrible navigator. Part of it comes from not having a lot of driving experience when I was younger. Part of it is just me. As a result, I went to fewer places then most of my friends because I was scared of getting lost. (I didn’t have a cell phone in my youth.) Job and social potential decreased, and so on with the rest of those dominoes.
For a while, I had it in my head that I had to learn to be a better navigator. Study maps. Take practice runs to complicated places. Train myself, despite the stress levels and damage to my spirit, to be able to drive anywhere.
Then, I borrowed a GPS device for the first time and everything changed. I could suddenly go anywhere, with almost no stress to my system.
GPS is a band-aid, and I know it. But I don’t care. I’m still a lousy navigator. But when I got my own GPS that problem ceased to matter. Band-aid. I would much rather slap a band aid on a problem like this, and know I can move on, (literally), then go nowhere until I beat those skills into my head. I can now drive anywhere I want to, without fear, just by pushing a few buttons.
What are your minor problems? What short cut band-aids can you use to solve them?
Fuck Them.
Yes, it’s a vulgar thing to say. And it represents uninspired writing on my part. I take pride in writing more intelligent prose. But this point is so important to me that “fuck them” is the only thing with enough punch to deliver my message.
I’m 32 years old, and I still get family help with my rent. Outside of my freelance writing work, I have never been able to get anything other than a seasonal or part time job my whole life. (Despite having a college degree, and applying for over 1,100 jobs over the years, when I stopped counting.) Off and on I have lived at home with my mother. I can’t promise it will never happen again. I am not married, in a relationship, or even visited at home by any local friends of mine.
Other than college I have never lived more than 15 miles from the hospital I was born in. And through it all, I have slaved, studied, investigated, searched, given up, started again, been close, failed, wondered what it was all for, fought harder still, and found myself moving backwards at times. All in an effort to get a decent job. Find someplace different and exciting to live. Do something for the world worthwhile with people that I respect. Pay the bills without killing my soul.
And I have met with some success in very narrow perimeters. And that only recently. But I am behind in many things, and I know it. I’m working on it. If you have similar difficulties, you should keep working on them too.
But if you are like me, you know what most people tend to think of those of us in such a situation. That we are lazy. Stupid. Perhaps even retarded or mentally ill. Unmotivated and lacking ambition. That we can only be clinically depressed loners, welfare gluttons, drunks, druggies or emo artists. Or some combination of the above.
So prevalent is the view that financial productivity and career placement define our very humanity, that it is almost a given anymore. People have bought into the notion that the entire purpose of existing is to secure a job, any job, right away at all costs. No matter what it does to our bodies, our souls, our spirits or our minds. Doesn’t matter if the only one you can find is a low paying job 2,000 miles away from everything you have ever known. Rent the U-Haul and get to it. “Paying bills and taxes are your primary responsibility,” such people spout. “You have to feed yourself.” ”A job’s a job.” ”Go where the money is.” “A job is supposed to make you miserable. That is life. Deal.”
Say it with me; “Fuck them.”
Don’t buy into this. Because to do so sets up a scenario wherein it’s far too easy to lose your humanity. Your self respect. Under this billowing flag of narrow mindedness, if you don’t force yourself into a job that you are not built for, if you are under employed, or lose a job, or just have difficulty in ever getting hired through no fault of your own, (like me) you are not a real person. People like us are third class citizens, under such a definition. (Conveniently, if not intelligently defended by those who say, “that’s just life.”)
But we are people, those of us who fail a lot. We are people who are willing to pay our dues, but we have just not been permitted to by circumstances beyond our control. We are denied, over and over again, the chance to pay those dues in ways that allow us to be who we are. Those that were just never quite shown the way. Never had a helping hand extended to us. Never really caught the breaks that most people catch.
And of course because we can’t pay our dues in the way that most people can, those same “most people” see us as marginal garbage. Socio-economic flotsam and jetsam that by our own choices have ended up just getting in the way of those who really are productive.
Again, fuck them. It may be the only two words to hang onto when you are at the end of your rope. Use them often, and use them well. Use them until you’re okay with the fact that so far, you have failed a lot. Use them until the views and attitudes of millions of others are pushed out of the center of your consciousness and replaced with what you know is the truth. Use those two words until all that remains in your mind is a clear view of what your problems are, and what your next steps need to be to solve them. At your own pace.
Use them until the only people who want to remain in the room with you are the ones that will love and respect you no matter what you say, where you go, what you do, and how often you fail. The people who will support you, emotionally and financially if need be, until you are on your own feet. Those are your real friends. Those are the ones that matter. And those are the ones who will join you in saying “fuck you” to anybody who offers you neither a helping hand nor a kind word as you struggle to face your problems.
Don’t avoid self improvement. Always face your issues head on. Don’t abdicate your responsibilities; work as hard as you can to fulfill them yourself. Don’t hurt other people. And for the love of the Divine, if you are able, help other people out of their situations any time you see a chance to do so. Be self-focused, not selfish.
Yet being so requires that you forget about what I know almost everyone else is going to be saying. You will in fact be so outnumbered in your struggle to do it your way, and obtain the help you need that diplomacy just won’t work. Only two words will beat back the tide.
“Fuck them.”
Go practice it. Today.
Ty Unglebower 