I’ve done a lot of sales training in my career.  An objection that has come up from time to time is “I feel that when I’m selling, I’m making people do something they don’t want to.  And I don’t want to manipulate people.”

It’s an important point to keep at the forefront of your thinking, because as you learn how to sell, you are learning how to influence people.  That in itself isn’t a bad thing.  We all influence people as we go through our day, even if it’s simply influencing your friends on where to go for dinner.  Considering that to be successful in sales you must influence people to make buying decisions, it makes sense to improve these skills.

These are skills, though, that can be used for positive or negative goals.  You can use your abilities, as they say, for good or evil.  Just as you could influence someone to stop smoking, you could also influence someone to make a poor health decision (like eating double cheese burgers everyday).  It’s like the Force in Star Wars – it has both a light and dark side.  Darth Vader developed his skills at using the Force, but was swayed to the dark side.  And you know how that ended up.

How do you make sure that you aren’t tempted to use your “powers” for evil?  One of the most important things you can do is grow and develop internally as you develop skills that can influence others externally.  To continue the Darth Vader analogy, he obviously could have used some life coaching or therapy before he developed the ability to crush people’s windpipes with his mind.  In many ways, he remained immature as a person even though he had developed great skills.  There weren’t any internal obstacles to prevent him from going to the dark side.

This is why developing yourself as a person is just as important as developing the skills necessary to be successful.  In selling, those skills involve being able to influence others – to influence how they think and act.  It might not be a Jedi mind-trick, but it’s a powerful ability.   The way you avoid using your skills negatively, the way you avoid “manipulating” your customers, is to make sure you’ve spent time developing yourself as a person.  This maturity will help guide you to use your skills for the highest good, and you won’t have to fear manipulating others.