Make Yourself Clear

11Selling with Immediacy

Immediacy has made things difficult for some professions. But it has also presented new opportunities to other professions. Sales, in its broadest sense, seems to have evolved alongside immediacy to reach the point where it is today. As such, the section that follows is specifically offered to those readers who are interested in sales and selling.

At one point in the history of selling (ideas, learning, services, products), we went door‐to‐door. Sometimes we carried our goods with us, sometimes we tried to convince people to place orders that would later be shipped. Often we performed a demo on the spot.

Now, we live and work in a far more complicated way. Sometimes, though rarely, we go door‐to‐door. Often we go screen‐to‐screen. Or face‐to‐face‐to‐screen.

We have sold in the same era where presidential debates were run face‐to‐face, and in parallel via websites and social media platforms.

Where people showed up for the game but stayed for the commentary.

Where the primary source was sought, but the secondary source was sometimes coveted or paid attention because it offered more of the story, more of the context.

As a seller (of ideas, learning, services, products), we have to be willing and able to juggle multiple learning conversations, across multiple platforms. We have to be in all of them, all conversation streams.

Or rather, we only have to if we want to catch the proverbial fish, which jumps from stream to stream with ease and abandon.

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