If you distill business… any business at all, what is all comes down to is a customer agreeing to pay money to a seller in exchange for a product or service. Put more simply. Without sales, there is no business.

Indeed sales are the most critical element of our business. If you ask most people, they will tell you they are afraid of sales, don’t enjoy it, do it when they have to, leave it up to the pros, or they simply don’t respect the position.

A third fact we also know is that most businesses launched, will end in failure. Perhaps there is a correlation here between these three facts. We know sales are critical, yet we don’t enjoy them or put the effort in they deserve, and then not surprisingly those businesses fail. Maybe I’m reaching a little bit with the direct cause and effect between those three, but the underlying fact is clear, getting better at sales is critical to your businesses survival and growth.

The good news is that Sales is not a born in art form, but rather a learned skill, and old dogs can learn new tricks.

Ian Selbie is a man who knows a thing or two about sales. He is not into his fourth decade in or teaching the profession, and has been around the block a few times. It stated in the early 80’s when he went to work for a young Steve Jobs at Apple Computers. By 1990 he was named Apple’s best sales person on earth.