I have created a new category here on the blog. It is “Listener Questions”. You will be able to search through it in the future–or be featured there if you like. This is the first entry in this category.

A listener [Rebecca in the United Kingdom] asks:

I  am a photographer’s rep.  I sell photographers to ad agencies, design agencies and magazines.  I tend to work for photographer’s agencies, selling on behalf of the agency head.

Often in my work I find myself having to sell photographers that I don’t think are very good.  Worse, sometimes I know the photographers to be slightly unprofessional.  It doesn’t sit right.  I don’t have any problems making sales on behalf of brilliant businesslike photographers, but I just can’t seem to get work for others.  It’s a lot of pressure because it directly affects the photographer’s finances and quality of life if they have no work coming in.

So my question is - are there any tricks, of the mind or otherwise, that I can employ to sell a product that I think is poor quality? creativity I know is subjective, but commercially, some styles work and others don’t).

I hope you can use this question on your show as it is one I have struggled with for years.  love the show.  It makes me feel miles ahead of my competition as foolishly they don’t consider themselves to be true salespeople and so miss out on a lot of info that’s out there.

Thank you for your kind words–and thanks for asking the question. I think this is a critical question.  What I will say is that I personally committed a long time ago to NOT use mind tricks to motivate myself to sell products or promote individuals I do not believe in  and/or  do not support.

Someone asked me in a workshop I was leading: “what if I do not really believe in the product I am selling”? My answer? “Sell something else.” Heh.  Never try to trick your internal integrity alarm.

It will serve you well and your clients and colleagues will trust you more–and all are better served in the long run. Even the photographers who you do not support may improve faster than they would have–because now they have to to respond to the market feedback. So you serve them as well by being more honest and NOT pushing their sub-standard product.

And this, of course, is one of the differences that makes the difference in the 21st Century Marketplace–and one of the foundational mindsets of  Evolutionary Sales.