Shoe Salesman

Once again I'm entering scary but very exciting waters.

In fact for most of today – as I began to work out how to implement my plan – I've been full of nervous energy. I'll certainly be stretching myself in the months to come because I have to learn to conquer my worst skill.

Sales.

The last sales job I had was selling shoes. And I sucked at it. My technique went a little like this:

Customer: I'll take them!
Me: Are you sure? They don't quite fit properly and they're not real leather.
Customer: No, they're fine, thank you.
Me: See how they slip at the back? That'll give you blisters if you walk in them for any length of time.
Customer: H..
Customer: Why don't you try that new store up the road? Much higher quality.

And to be fair, it was much higher quality at the store up the road. Our store was buying cheaper and more cheaper goods and nobody wanted them. (Sure, I admit I probably didn't help matters).

The moral of the story is I can't help being honest.

About a year ago, I almost certainly had the skills necessary to be making a living from developing websites. But if I tried selling myself a year ago my sales pitch would probably have been: 'I can create you a slightly above average site'.

Since then, I've become a little obsessed with the subject of web development, design and programming. I shifted my focus away from getting a steady stream of work and put it squarely on learning to be better. I'm not sure how healthy it is to work seven days a week, but I'm pretty sure I've learnt a healthy amount about web development in that time.

It's time to see if sales is easier when you truly believe in what you have to sell.