When I meet with college students who want to be entrepreneurs, they often ask me – what’s the one thing they can learn while they’re in school?
I say, it’s sales. You need to learn how to sell. That’s ONE skill you can learn while still being in school.
Just about everything about founding a company is sales. Raising money from investors is sales. Convincing very smart people to join you is sales. Selling your product to customers is (obviously) sales.
By learning sales, I don’t mean picking up sleek talking skills or becoming a snake oil salesman.
Learning sales ultimately means finding out what you’re truly passionate about in your life. Most people can be the best salesperson for things they know reall, really well. If you’re a lifelong Nintendo gamepacks collector who’s also been leading a related online community, I’m sure you won’t have much problem selling your game collections on eBay.
Learning sales is learning how to become a killer communicator. This also means learning how to listen; No one wants to buy a product from a salesperson who never stops talking but never listens to you.
Learning sales is understanding empathy and growing EQ, and learning how to relate to people and become a genuine, friendly person other people like to talk to.
Learning sales is knowing that other people’s life is absolutely as important and valuable as yours and finding ways to help them achieve their life goals by forming a team together and achieving great things collectively, and sharing the upside.
And my bet is, you can’t really learn these from textbooks or 10 minute Youtube videos; Go out, meet people and hang out with them more!