I’ve been to Mexico before and was aware of how upfront the Mexicans are in selling. However, I never looked at it from a business perspective before. They really have no shame in asking people for the sale. In fact, they ask over and over and over again – repeatedly. My husband and I realized they really have no shame around selling. We heard a lot of the vendors say if we bought from them, we would help their families! Imagine that! It really is as simple as that though. We are all trying to make a living to help our families – and some of us are fortunate to do it in a way that we love and are passionate about 🙂 There really shouldn’t be any shame in doing that. If we have something (insert product or service) that people want and/or need, then why shouldn’t we sell it? Why does selling have to be such a bad thing?
The reason is actually pretty simple. People don’t want to be “sold” to. We all want to make decisions on our own terms and don’t want to be told what to do. If someone is “telling” us what to do, then they appear too “salesy”. This also happens when they think they know what we want but aren’t really listening. We don’t feel heard, and again, they appear “salesy”.
When we’re “selling” to people, we’re really just letting people know how we can solve a problem for them. If we take the time to find out what they need (want) and can truly help them, it becomes a positive experience and people will want to work with us. Our focus needs to be on gathering information from a prospective customer in order to find out if we can really help them. If we can, then it’s appropriate to make (close) the sale. There is no shame only helpfulness. If we can’t help them, then we can refer them to someone we know who might be able to. We’re still in essence helping them.
Another observation worth mentioning is the whole “saying no” issue. One of my friends and I were joking about how we would say no to vendors and restaurateurs and feel the need to explain why. Like “no, sorry I just ate” or “no, sorry we have a reservation somewhere else”. What is with that? Does it never end? It’s. OK. to. say. no! Please repeat this as I confirm it to myself while writing. I’ve given talks about this and written about it numerous times, which is probably because I still struggle with it sometimes myself. Why do we feel the need to explain why we’re saying no? People usually just want an answer. This was evidentially clear in Vallarta. The person selling sombreros really didn’t care that we had already bought a Mexican wrestling mask for our son. He just wanted to know if he might make a sale. My go-to response became “no, thank you” and I left it at that. If you’re looking for a fun place to practice saying no without justification, then I highly recommend you do it somewhere in paradise, such as Vallarta 🙂