No matter how you look at it, once you’ve learned sales skills, you’ve sharpened a tool that will help you throughout your life. Sales performance in any job leads to individual success in the form of promotions, raises, and future opportunities. You can and will use your sales skills in all areas of your life. You may not always be working in a tanning salon, but the skills you learn today and develop at your salon can be transferred almost anywhere in the future.

It’s quite likely that the first time you applied for a job at an indoor tanning salon, you didn’t really think of it as a sales job. Most people don’t. Actually, most people steer away from sales jobs – in part because they don’t really understand that sales is more about relationships than it is about that cheesy used car guy.

Indoor tanning is a competitive industry. In order to compete effectively, every salon operator must become a successful salesperson. And that’s you. When you’re standing behind that front counter, you ARE a professional, educated salesperson, not just someone who turns on the bed after letting the customer determine how many minutes they want to tan. The more effective you are as a salesperson, the more revenue you generate for your salon. The more revenue you generate for your salon, the more the boss likes it and the more successful the salon becomes. The great thing about successful salespeople is that they create business and energy. Everyone wants to be part of a winning team—even customers seem happier when business is good!

The very thought of “SALES” strikes fear and dread into many of us. But it’s really not that scary, and it’s really not that hard to do, once you know how. Selling is a skill, and just like any other skill, it can be learned through study, practice, and the application of principles.

Click here to read the entire article in the latest issue of Smart Tan Magazine online.