A career feld that’s always hiring
By Ernie Mitchell
HTF Columnist
If you want to make a lot of money learn how to sell! There will always be a demand for competent salespeople. The employment and income opportunities are wide open!
By selling their wares salespeople create the demand that fuels the fires of industry that creates jobs and keeps the wheels of industry spinning. In short, the buck starts with sales. When the state of the economy worsens, the need for highly skilled sales professionals only becomes more critical.
In Worthington Holman’s brilliant 1905 book, “Ginger Talks - The Talks of a Sales Manager to His Men,” Holman reminds his sales force that they are “the chaps who are supposed to keep the smoke coming out of the factory chimney.” He then goes on to say, “We want more smoke,” meaning, “We want more sales.”
Even though in our modern age of clean and green industry, it’s no longer politically correct to speak in terms of smoke and smokestacks, Holman’s words are possibly the best definition of the mission of salespeople ever written. We used to say, “Where there’s smoke there’s money.” Although times have changed, the underlying premise still rings true.
There is long term job security in the sales career! A perpetual shortage of skilled sales professionals has been with us since the mid nineteenth century when the Civil War radically changed the nation’s manufacturing capacities. Before the war the nation’s economic weakness hinged on a lack of production capacity. At the end of the war, the added manufacturing capacity created by tooling up for the war transformed the nation into a manufacturing based economy.
With abundant manufacturing capacity, it becomes easier to make products than to sell products - easier to supply demand than to create demand. The shift to over abundance in manufacturing capacity created an ongoing demand for professional salespeople that’s still with us today.
Mark Twain once said, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” So is the case with the sales profession. In the late 1800s, when mail order catalogs and mail order advertis- ing came along, soothsayers attempted unsuccessfully to write the obituary for peddlers and salesmen. The wishful thinking behind their proclamations was based on the assumption that modern advertising could deliver a sales message via the U.S. mail that would motivate prospects to rush to the post office and mail their order direct to the home office thereby eliminating the need for salespeople. To their chagrin, the soothsayers discovered that although direct mail is a valuable sales tool it isn’t effective enough to totally eliminate the need for salespeople. A few years ago, with the advent of the internet and eCommerce websites, the all knowing soothsayers once again sounded the death knell - once again to no avail.
What the soothsayers failed to take into account were the personal relationships and human engineering factors that come into play in the sales process. Companies don’t buy products from other companies. People within companies buy products from other people within other companies. The seller’s brand is an important part of the purchasing equation but more often than not, the factors that bring about a positive buying decision, especially in the beginning of the relationship, are heavily dependent on the relationship the salesperson has established with the prospect.
Human engineering is a phrase coined by the late and great author, sales trainer and public speaker Cavett Roberts in his musthave book, “Success With People Through Human Engineering & Motivation.” Cavett describes a human engineer as a person that not only knows what people will do and why they do it but also how to cause them to do it.
There are no secrets! The rules that govern success in selling have been published and are available to all. With desire, tenacity and a willingness to learn new skills anyone can become a well paid sales pro. The key to success is to treat your entry into sales as a profession and never stop studying your profession. For starters pick up a copy of Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends And Influence People,” Percy Whiting’s “The 5 Great Rules Of Selling,” Zig Ziglar’s “Secrets Of Closing The Sale,” and Cavett Robert’s “Success With People Through Human Engineering & Motivation” and start studying. For motivation on your journey bear in mind that not only do competent sales people control the amount of money they make, they are also the first to get hired and the last to get fired when the economy turns sour. Happy Sales!
Ernie Mitchell, Moose Lake Hill, Orr, MN, © All Rights Reserved 2010.
