On the heels of my post about the top 30 open ended sales questions, I found an article written by the author of the Rich Dad series of books, Robert Kiyosaki.

He talks about the advice his rich dad gave him as a young college student just starting out in the business world:

"The number one skill of an entrepreneur is the ability to sell. If you can't sell, you should consider another line of work."

He further goes on to say that "Sales equals income."

I like that. During my 18 years with Pearle Vision we had many presidents - almost one a year - (not quite but we did have plenty) and one president coined the phrase "Sales cures cancer."

Crude. Appalling. Offensive.

Yet, I understood what he meant. There are only two ways to improve a business; cut costs or grow sales. And frankly there are only so many ways you can cut costs and still function effectively.

Robert goes on to say that his rich dad taught him that "there are three people an entrepreneur has to sell to, the employee, the investor and the customer. These three people are your sources of money."

I like that, too. You have to sell the ideas to the investor to gain the capital you need. You need to sell the value of your service/product to your employees so they can effectively sell to the customers. Ultimately you need to sell to the customers so they, not only buy, but refer and return.

So once again, whether you think you are a sales person or not....you are.

Deborah Chaddock Brown
Professional Writer, Struggling Sales Person
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