Are You a Sell Out?

I've never been comfortable seeing myself as a sales person. I'd rather be labelled as a marketing professional creating sophisticated marketing strategies to win over customers.

Sales for me pulls up images of those annoying credit card salespeople shoving application forms in your face. Or those infuriating telemarketers who call you in the most inopportune time, never let you put a word in and just run through their product spiel while you get billed for every second of their nonsense. I wasn't raised to be rude or anything but in this case, I won't hesitate to hang up.

Being in sales would be like a death sentence. A death sentence to my dignity that is. I have to swallow heaps of my pride and open myself to rejection, ire or outright ridicule. And to close that sale you have to keep smiling like a simpleton and nodding your head to whatever crap is thrown at you. 

That to me is my impression of the sales profession. Yeah, you get to enjoy a windfall of huge commissions when you successfully seal a deal. But not after having your ego crushed by unapologetic jerks who either play you or just want you out of their faces. Obviously, sales is not for the sensitive types. The balance of power is not likely to be in your favor.

This long held view seemed to be challenged by an article I read on Success Magazine. It was a letter from the editorial director Darren Hardy. 

Hardy suggests that sales is actually not a bad word. It is something all of us engage in every single day. Whether we want to recommend a good movie to a friend or convince your husband to try a new restaurant we saw online, it is simply the art of influencing people. Whether or not you stand to gain directly from the persuasion, life will be so much easier if you have the life skill of convincing people to do what you want.

Like today, I was telling a friend about this small company printing photos on wood and frames them. They come our real nice and artsy. She got interested and asked me for their contact number. I didn't realize it but I was actually pitching this company without them knowing about it and me handsomely compensated for it. I guess for me when money is involved in recommending stuff, the credibility goes down a little bit. More so if you are pitching to strangers and you become nothing more than the company's mouthpiece to be dealt with with caution and a healthy dose of skepticism. 

Hardy disagrees and goes on to say that we must change our perspective on the word "sell," and think of it as giving "help" or "advice" to a person who needs it. Instead of pitching a memorized spiel, why not consider the person's dreams, aspirations or problems that need solutions and take it from there.

It got me thinking that indeed this is a great paradigm shift in philosophy. It goes on to quote Zig Ziglar's teachings "You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want." This the power of reciprocity. I thought yeah, makes sense.  

So rather than looking as salespeople as bottom of the barrel scumbags willing to lie, cheat and steal to close a sale, there are a few diamonds in the rough genuinely willing to help. 

But I do think the timing and conditions are equally important to prime the potential buyer to listen to what you have to say. Unfortunately, lousy telemarketers and aggressive credit card salespeople are just clueless. 

While I haven't completely fallen in love with the sales profession, I think I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Marketing, however, is still my first love.