© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
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• I took one Draught of Life/I'll tell you what I paid/Precisely an existence/ The market price, they said. Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

To get that heartthrob of a person to be your only true love, you had to sell yourself. Now that you're together in conjugal bliss, you want to go to Place X for vacation, while the other person was set on Place Y. You've got to sell again, to convince the other person that you'll both have more fun and spend less money in Place X. Like anyone selling any­thing, you'll state your case, describe the benefits, deal with objections, and ask for the order. If you don't, well have fun in Place Y.

You have plenty of practice selling. You got it by working on—you guessed it—your dad. If he does give you the keys to the car, he not only will have a quiet evening but he'll have the satisfaction of helping his child out. If he objects that he doesn't like not knowing where you'll be, you stress that Mrs. XYZ will be chaperoning at all times and that you'll be back by midnight. Finally, if he hems and haws you'll ask directly for a decision. If you don't, well have fun sitting in your room tonight reading Tolstoy.

You want that promotion on the job, but, as we've seen, you cannot just sit back and wait to be noticed. You assess the timing and communication climate. Some way or other you make sure that your boss knows how well you've done. You get across that you really want that promotion. (The best way is to tell the boss straight out that you really want it). You stress and stress again that you're qualified. You isolate the boss's possible objections, deal with them, and ask for the promotion. If you don't get quick results, you follow up, you repeat the process. (You do it all with grace and skill of course; you're never a pest.) You're selling.

Selling is the logical extension of asking. When we sell we describe benefits to the other person. We encounter the same problems as we do with asking; specifically, how to find the right time, atmosphere, frame of mind and place. Like asking, selling isn't always easy. But we have the law of numbers on our side. If we fail to sell the first time around, we can try again, perhaps under improved circumstances. If we fail to sell to one person we have the option to move on to the next.

It's important to work, to sweat, if we want to get ahead in life. But as important as sweat is, it's critical to give the work some real structure. In many instances, that framework, that direction, is a sales situation. Selling allows us to focus all that sweat and effort toward a tangible and desirable result.

It pays, then, to learn as much as possible about selling. There are many fine books on the subject. But nothing works better than actual field experience. It never hurt a suc­cess‑oriented person to have a sales job for a time. But even if you don't have the option of being employed in sales, you should keep aware of the sales context in everyday human interactions. If you ever lose the thread, just think back to asking dad for the car keys.