I had it wrong, it never was about selling I find . . .

. . . that it was really about something else.

I do love being in my 50's, so far it's the best time in my life and it allows me the leisure, and frankly the peace of mind to question things all the time.  Areas of life, or common judgements I merely accepted now pop up with "Hey! Is that REALLY true?" all the time.  And that brings me to my current 'ah ha!'

Professionally I started out in journalism, interviewing folks, writing down their experiences and words in hopefully an interesting manner.  As I segued into sales, I began to realize my ability to convince people to sit still for questions, and to get the needed information out of them, was a handy skill in sales too.

What I've realized lately is that the selling wasn't really the goal, or even what I was really doing at the time.  Someday I might write a book about it, or perhaps hold a few clases, but my 'ah ha!' the last few weeks is that what I've been doing all this time is not convincing people to say YES.  Rather the process has all been about helping them decide they WANT to say yes. 

Truly it takes the whole traditional sales process and strategy out of the loop - get someone to want to say yes has been the key (at least in my professional history from this long and lofty age).  Get them to want to say yes and you aren't selling any longer, you're someone helping them figure out what they want to do.  And that's a whole different experience between people.

I'm going to think more about this, and how it shaped my triple win scenario theory - maybe there is even a greater win in all of that than I had ever considered.