It is hard to teach someone how to sell. While I have done many talks to young startup entrepreneurs, telling them they have to sell is not enough. Learning how to sell can only be done by selling, by doing it every day and in every way and to everyone. If one is reflective and ask themselves and other questions maybe eventually they can gain the emotional and cultural intelligence to understand how to sell. I presented this list at the end of a talk at the Unicredit Startup Academy in Milan 2017.

1. 24 Oct 2017 Unicredit Startup Academy Ray Garcia
Selling - learning by inquiry
1. Turn off the cellphones, they prevent you from concentrating on the present
2. Standing power stretch to connect with your body language
3. Introduce your self to the person sitting next to you and give them a chance to tell
you about their business in just a few words. Then you can explain your business.
Do this in 3 minutes total. The person you introduce yourself to is going to be asked
to sell your business proposition to others so you have to be very concise.
4. Who are the sales people in the room?
5. Why is it that everyone does not raise their hands?
6. Who is the first person you have to sell to?
7. Then the second group of people, then who is next?
8. How do you learn how to sell?
9. When do you know when you are ready to start selling to customers?
10. How would you sell a fidget or a pet rock?
11. Are you able to persuade and convince someone that what you are selling they need
even if they were unaware of the product or that they needed it?
12. Who likes to fail repeatedly, like 100 times, over and over again? Have you ever
done this in your life?
13. Can you convert a failure into a success? How would you do it?
14. Can you turn everyone into your sales person without paying them?
15. What makes for an effective sales person?
16. Do people ever buy products they do not need or ever use?
17. What is the difference between a consumer sale and a business sale?
18. What makes a product easy to sell?
19. What is the true cost of making your product, your COGS?
20. What is the true cost of selling your product?
21. What is the true cost of buying your product?
22. Who buys the fidget? Why do they buy it?

2. 24 Oct 2017 Unicredit Startup Academy Ray Garcia
23. Can you sell an umbrella on a sunny day?
24. How would you sell 10,000 umbrellas?
25. To sell is to be human. If you do not love selling then you probably will never make
any real money.
26. Is selling the same as manipulating people?
27. Can you read the table and the room?
28. Is selling like playing dice, poker, or chess?
29. Is it possible to listen when you are speaking?
30. If you do not trust people first how do you expect them to ever buy something from
you? Be vulnerable
31. Can a customer kill your business?
32. Can stupid people sell? Or can you be so clever that you do stupid things?
33. Human nature, can you ever really understand it?
34. What is intelligence? What does a sales person need to know?
35. Is sales luck or it is a process?
36. Does personality matter?
37. Prospecting - the art of finding buyers and leading through the sales funnel.
38. What are you actually selling that people want?
39. Are you asking your customer for money or are you giving them an opportunity to
solve a problem they have, meet a desire they want to fulfill or giving them an
opportunity to use your product so they can make money as well?
40. How can I help you is a much easier way to start a conversations than how can you
help me! Are you willingly serving people sincerely and honestly?
41. Give before you get, why you should think this way?
42. Do you think any contacts you have are of any value? If so, why, if not why?
43. How do you build a network of alliances if you do not have one already?
44. Pass it forward, that is what a network is for.
45. The buy signals and the customer journey. What is going on in the minds of your
customers from the first time you identify them until they are using your product?
46. At what point do you stop trying to sell to a customer?

3. 24 Oct 2017 Unicredit Startup Academy Ray Garcia
47. When a sale goes wrong, the body language and the cell phone distraction.
48. Can you project enthusiasm and positive attitude even when someone is
misbehaving. How do you get the customer to feel good and smart about buying
from you?
49. Listening deeply then paraphrasing. Can you make the idea of buying, a process that
your customer wants to do, in effect, stop selling and let them go through a buy
process they control?
50. Buyers hesitancy and fears and how to overcome it. They will raise many objections
so can you address each one until they do not have a reason not to buy it?
51. Without urgency and impulse people do not act. It is a lot easier to not buy than to
have to make a decision so every sale is a battle for change.
52. Do people buy innovation?
53. How to create a safe zone for the buyer that expands their comfort zone?
54. Talk talk and more talk, do they have a budget and is money flowing that can be
reallocated to buy your product?
55. Don't have a network of contact? How do you create it?
56. Networking endlessly, when does it stop?
57. Fact and fake, science and design. What is it that people want and what is it that the
buy?
58. Does the buyer need time to think or time to feel good?
59. Who might influence the sale that you have not met yet?
60. Do people ever make a decision? Or is the decision made once they remove all the
choices?
61. Be prepared, be alert, be surprised.
62. The first 30 seconds, unconscious bias and how to overcome it.
63. Are you aware of your own assumptions and biases and can you get past them?
64. Short term gain and long term loss
65. All opportunity is about the relationship, without which opportunities die quickly
66. Empathy and seeing the others point of view. Can you get out of your own head for a
moment?
67. "Help me understand...." The most important words you can use

4. 24 Oct 2017 Unicredit Startup Academy Ray Garcia
68. "Is your concern...." Second most important words
69. Do you know how to have a conversation? Do you know when to shut-up and listen?
70. Is what you hear what you understand and is what you understand what the
customer meant?
71. Repeat, repeat, repeat, but in different ways.
72. Write it down. Recording notes is much better than trying to remember things
73. Removing doubts, demonstrating the value of your product directly and letting the
customer test it.
74. Competition, know your product well but know the competitors products just as
well.
75. Wonder, Wish, Wise
76. Why, what, how...whether, which, when, where
77. Answer broad questions with specific example answers
78. Answer specific question with the broader context
79. Customer fears, of being lied to, or making a mistake, of losing face, of the unknown,
of repeating a bad experience, prejudice, 3rd party information.
80. Bad customers, the ones who use you to educate them to make a decision to buy
someone else's product.
81. Avoid selling over lunches, dinners, and golf courses. It will just cost you money and
be a distraction.