Integrity Selling Point #1: Exchange of Value

Ron Willingham, in Integrity Selling; How to Succeed in Selling in the Competitive Years Ahead (New York: Doubleday, 1987), p. xv, says the first point of integrity selling is that "selling is an exchange of value." You're giving something to somebody else and getting something in exchange.

It may not be money. You may have sold a colleague on the fact that you an expert in your field. You've sold him on your reputation and maybe he's sold you on his. What you've exchanged is the potential for mutual referrals.

If it's a product, you're giving him a shoe in exchange for money. If the shoe costs $50, you're getting $50, and he's getting comfort, or style, or convenience, or status, or something.

If it's a service, you're getting money and the pride of having helped that person achieve his or her goals. As a real estate agent, the greatest payment is to hear someone say, "You changed our lives, we can never pay you enough."

The value you're getting is not just the money, but the pride and satisfaction from having given something to somebody that that somebody values.

The thing you have to figure out is what you're customer is buying.

What do you think about this? Post a comment to this blog.

This is some of the stuff that will go into my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.