My name is Alexander Nijs and I consider myself being in sales from 1954. Indeed, that is the year of my birth. Maybe, you were asking yourself, “For God’s sake, this man is around ninety years old, what can he teach us today about sales?”  

Well, let me state the following, we all are in sales from the day we are born. We need to sell ourselves all the time to our mom, our dad, our siblings, our loved ones, our grandparents, our colleagues, our bosses and customers. So, you'd better get good at sales or let us also call it persuasion, influencing, getting things done.  

The “sales job” is not always appreciated in our society. There are a lot of crazy ideas running around about sales folks such as “this is the only thing they are good at” or, ” they cannot get a proper job.” I was at a wedding, and a person asked me, “What do you do for a living?” I told him proudly, “I am in sales.” After that he asked me, “What would you really like to do in life?” I was a little bit offended by his remark. He gave me the impression that sales is not a job, but something like a rescue gateway if you do not know what to do in life.  

For those who know me, most of the time I do have a quick reply, and that day I had a lightning speed answer ready. I told him salespeople are crucial for the prosperity of our society. If no sales were made for a month, the consequences would be dramatic. For example, factories would have to close their doors because there would be no need to produce anything anymore, meaning people would lose their jobs, with all the consequences. It would have a dramatic domino effect on our economy.  

Salespeople play an important role in our economy as of course do a lot of other jobs. A society can grow faster, bring more prosperity for all people when we sell more of our products and services.   

 Today we all have a huge interest in putting the best salespeople in the market in front of their customers, nationally and internationally. Let us collaborate to develop and coach the best salespeople in the world. It will help us to grow faster, and it will safeguard the future not only for us but also for the generations to come.  

    I would love to hear your ideas about how to create the best sales force ever.  

    ”Let us start to co-create.”  

    Wishing you all a great sales day, of course.  

    Several articles on sales will follow under the umbrella “Alexander on Sales.” such as  

Mindset of Topsales People, Goalsetting, Preparation, Connecting with customers, Trust, Listening, Questioning, Dialoguing, Objection handling, Closing skills,Time & priority management, Physical condition, Mindfulness, Segmentation, Product features & benefits, Handling competition, Presenting your product, Energy building, The sellogram, Buying motives, The black box, The Crucial Attitude needed in Sales, Non-verbal communication, NLP in Sales, Motivation, Conversational Intelligence in Sales, Courage coping with fear, Limiting beliefs, Creating opportunities, Marketing as a booster for sales, Your inner game & outer game, Success behaviours, Observation skills