The Lifeblood of Any Business

Photo: Best of Friends by Sir Mervs

If I were to ask you what’s the most important factor for business survival (and growth), what would it be?

Is it detailed accounting? Effective management perhaps? Or maybe cutting-edge technology? How about a fancy website?

Before I tell you what I think it is, let me just tell you a quick story.

The story of the 2 cavemen

Long before big corporations existed, there were two cavemen. They each worked for their own for survival. One day, they met each other during a hunt.

Caveman A noticed that caveman B had a sharper spear. And caveman B, noticed that caveman A had a better bow. So in all their wit, they decided to trade.

Your spear for my bow. Deal.

There weren’t any money involved. But as the number of stuff to trade grew, they realize they needed a better way.

Thus born the world’s first cash. And a few thousand years later, that transaction grow to be the complex commerce system we have today.

Do you know what is the lifeblood of any business yet?

When people talk about salesman, they gag. We, as a community, tend to look down on them. Heck, we hate them. Salesman = hype, scams and spams. Instead, we prefer to be doctors, firemen, pilots or teachers and so on.

Right? I know, I’ve been there. That’s what we teach children in pre-schools.

That’s why most of us are afraid to sell… we tone down our writing to sound “neutral” (boring), we scale down ads, we are afraid to sound hypey, we dare not test marketing tactics that may boost our bottomline… tactics such as pop-up opt-in boxes.

Fact is, sales and marketing, is the very lifeblood of any business. No sales = no business. If there’s no salesman, then there’s also no commerce. Any entrepreneur who went from zero to a million, mastered the art of salesmanship.

And the rich realize that for anyone to make it in the business world, they need to know how to sell.

And that’s why in “The Apprentince”, Donald Trump made a bunch of MBA graduates sell ice cream out of a cart, at the sidewalk of a busy street. And guess what? Most of them did horribly.

And if you’re afraid people would hate you, get over it. You can’t please everyone anyway.