Sold!

Robert Kiyosaki, America’s favorite rich dad, says he’s often asked how to raise money by people, according to a recent article in Entrepreneur magazine. Time and time again he tells them they need to sell. According to the article, Kiyosaki deferred his dream of becoming an entrepreneur after coming out of the Marines for 4 years while pursing sales training at Xerox.

Kiyosaki realizes that many people hate the idea of sales. There are too many stereotypes to list that usually go along with sales people, and sadly most of them are not too flattering. For this reason many people avoid selling at all or convince themselves their jobs don’t require sales. Kiyosaki boldly interrupts by saying, “Entrepreneurs can’t afford this luxury.” He goes on to describe how his rich dad told him that there are 3 types of people entrepreneurs need to sell to: employees, customers, and investors. And there are three sources of income: employees, customers and investors. He wraps up the article by drilling in that selling is the most important skill of an entrepreneur.

Interestingly enough, I agree. This article in no way came as a shock to me. Maybe only possibly a shock that it even needed to be written at all. I strongly believe that the ability to sell and network are hands down the most important skills any entrepreneur can have. I’m open to argument, but unless you argue leadership I won’t even hear you. Leadership in my opinion is a close third, but only because if you can’t sell you won’t even have people to lead. And if you can’t network good luck finding good people skilled enough to be worth leading.