No matter who you are or what you do, you are in sales. We ALL sell every day. If you’re a leader, you’re in sales by trying to convince your team to follow you. If you’re a team member, you’re trying to convince your leadership of your passion, skills and abilities.

If you’re a pastor, you’re trying to convince your congregation on your belief of what the Bible says. If you’re a mom, you’re trying to convince your kids that if they don’t clean up their room, you’ll count to three … and then they begin begging until you let them off the hook and they can go back to watching cartoons! Sorry, I got caught up in the lack of parenting I see nowadays.

No matter your “occupation,” you should have a sticker on your shirt that says, “I’m in sales. Ask me about it!” Selling is nothing more than trying to convince someone. That’s it. Now what you convince them of can be infinite—your product, your opinion, etc.

So why am I pointing all of this out? Because sometimes, OK quite often, I feel like people don’t understand the need for bettering their sales abilities.

Let me give you an example. I was recently on a tiny beach on the back side of Sint Maarten. There were only a dozen or so people there, and we were all on lounge chairs baking in the sun.

Side note: It’s really difficult for me to just sit there sun bathing. Anyway, within one minute of me putting my feet in the sand, a man walked up to me and tried to sell me a CD. Of what? I’m not sure. But I was pretty confident I didn’t want it, especially since I left my last-century CD Walkman in my other shorts.

Ten feet later, I was asked, “You want to buy a beer or some food?” To which I responded with a no thank you. About two minutes after I set my stuff down and laid back on the lounge chair, a lady walked up to me and asked, “Would you like to buy some gourds?” (I’m saying gourds because that’s what they were. Gourds on a string. But I have no clue what the word was that she used.) “I’m good,” I said.

This continued to happen for a few minutes with the last few “salespeople” on the beach. Surprisingly, I have no CD. I have no gourd on a string. And I have no braids in my hair, which would make for some very small braids, by the way. Why I was not sold on any of these wonderful products? Because walking up to me and saying, “Do you want to buy” just doesn’t get me giddy.

There were no steps of a proper sales process followed whatsoever. I won’t go into all of those steps because you can read them in Serve Don’t Sell. If your sales process doesn’t include persuading me, then you’re just wasting everyone’s time. The same goes for you as a parent, a teacher, a preacher, etc. If I feel like all you want is my response for your benefit, I’m out. But if you make me believe that I need your product, your opinion or your gourds on a string, then I’m in all of the way.

Question: What ways have you found best to “sell” people?