Day 14: Don’t Just Love Your Customers, Love Your Product

Wanted: hard-working self-starter. Blah-de-blah-motivated-blah-blah. Call for appointment.

Back when people looked for jobs in the newspaper classifieds, on actual paper, I eventually learned that ‘self-starter’ and ‘motivated’ were code words for ‘sales job’ and ‘on commission.’

After some interesting disasters – like the time I sold encyclopedias door-to-door and that woman slammed her door in my face, but not before reaming me out for asking to speak with her husband (what?! It was 1967!) – I finally learned to steer clear of those ads. I was SO not cut out to be a salesperson.

And now look at me.

Turns out, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to sell.

Photo by keltickelton

The funny thing is that when I gave up answering the ads and went back to what I knew, waitressing, I had no trouble selling. When a truck driver ordered pie, I asked with a grin if he wanted it á la mode. More often than not, he did.

When the fat man asked me to recommend dessert, I described the strawberry whipped-cream cake with such passion that I became his favorite waitress. My tips grew too.

Food was my Thing. Encyclopedias were not.

I loved the smells, the tastes and the sounds of the restaurants I worked in over the years, and I loved feeding my customers. Putting a plate full of steaming, delicious, nourishing (okay, maybe not the healthiest)  food in front of a hungry human being is one of the overlooked pleasures in life.

To be honest, there were things I did not love about being a waitress. My feet ached and I grew increasingly resentful of the lack of respect I was getting, not so much from customers but from cooks and managers. Eventually, the down side outweighed the up side and I went back to school.

I was lucky to find a line of work that I loved even more, as a radio newscaster.

Of course, I wasn’t selling – I was part of the product that the station account executives sold. But if I hadn’t been in love with my work, with radio, and with the listeners, selling the product (me) would have been a lot more difficult, and I wouldn’t have lasted long.

If you’re having a hard time selling your product (or service), ask yourself how much you love it.

We use the word passion a lot, but that’s what you need to communicate in order for people to fall in love with what you’ve got. How much do you love what you’re selling? How convinced are you that others will love it too? How much do you love serving it to them?

Does it show?

Tell me what you love about your work, your stuff, and your customers in the comments below. How do you let them know?