When people hear the word “persistent”, they often think of “pushy”- and most of us have enough negative associations with sales and selling that we never want to be seen as a “pushy salesperson.” We don’t want to be like that used car salesman who keeps pestering us about the latest and greatest deal on a piece of junk we don’t even want.

The good news is that you don’t need to be pushy to sell high end programs and services. The truth is, though, that you need to be persistent. The difference between pushy and persistent has to do with positioning and target market. A salesperson is considered pushy if he keeps using the same strategy or technique to try and sell to someone who is not interested. The pushy salesperson has most likely not positioned himself well in the first place, and he may not have targeted his client well in the second place.

Contrast that to a persistent salesperson who has strong positioning and has selected his target well. The persistent salesperson realizes that with proper positioning and correct target market selection, it’s no longer a question of IF the sale will be made- it has become just a question of WHEN. The persistent salesperson realizes that he might need to deeply educate his target, and that this education should only proceed with a sales process embedded within it. It would be foolish to simply educate without some call to action or selling process at the end.

Yet many entrepreneurs will educate their markets over and over and over, and never move their target client towards a sale. What’s the point of that? I’m all for education (being a former Vice Principal), but I see education in the business world as being most valuable when it is tied to sales and marketing. You can educate your market very well, but if you never close a sale, your business will fail.

So the idea is that each of us need to be persistent salespeople, and keep sharing our passion and enthusiasm and our message to the right clients in the right way at the right time. Then the sale becomes a WHEN? not an IF.