Are You In Sales?

Last week I was in a sales training. On the first day the instructor asked everyone to give their names how many years in sales they had been in sales. The second person that was up said her name. She then followed up by saying she was in customer care and she was not in sales. The instructor immediately disagreed with her and asked her some questions that made her think about her original response.

A lot of people do not want to be in sales. This may be because of the image of the sleazy used car salesperson they had recently of the per son who always seems to be "wheeling & dealing".

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a little less than 15.5 million employed American have an occupation that is considered as sales or sales management. This is about 10.6% of those that are employed. Over the next 10 years, this percentage is expect to decrease slightly by about .33%.

So what about the remaining 80.4% of Americans. Does this mean they are not in sales? I think many people would say yes. However, based on the instructor from last week, I would argue that everyone is in some form of sales. I would take this one step further that this is true regardless of your position or even if you are employed or not.

Whether or not you are in a specific sales role, you are selling. Whether you are selling your ideas, your strategy, trying to work with a new team, or getting people to back your idea, you are selling. If you are looking for a new job or working on getting a promotion, you are selling yourself.

Once you realize that you are in sales, I believe you will start to analyze things in a different light. Then you will begin to act in some ways like a salesperson. Not I am not referring to the stereotypical sleazy used car salesperson. I am talking about using a different set of skills to convince people to go your way, see your perspective, or work with you on a special project they may have not before. When you begin to act like a salesperson, you will begin to ask question to get more information on the situation as it is.

And once you realize you are in sales, you will see that being a salesperson is not so bad as you thought it would be.

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J. Nolfo works as a strategic marketing, market research & analytics strategy guy for a large international chemical company. He also moonlights as adjunct professor at a local community college. The topics he writes about run wild based on whatever he is thinking about at the time and do not reflect the opinions of anyone he may be professionally associated with. All of his post can be found here and if you would like to read my regular posts then please click 'Follow' (at the top of the article under my name).

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