How Military Skills Help a Career in Sales
This Content Provided Courtesy of USAA.
Sales roles are some of the most difficult and the most rewarding of any position in business. Sales roles whether in a major corporation, a small business, a food truck vendor, or on the floor of a retail shop require patience, skill, good nature, a deep understanding of the customer, and a daily willingness to go above and beyond to help the customer satisfy their needs. A sales role requires you to educate, inform, negotiate, and conclude sales opportunities with a wide variety of different customers and to use different skill sets simultaneously to ensure a solution that meets both the customer’s needs and the needs of the sales organization.
There are several military skill sets that can make a sales role more enjoyable and more successful.
- Be an Expert in Your Field & Have the Latest Corporate News. In the military, a great military leader not only sets the example in their own unit, but also helps other military units succeed. A salesperson is similar to a military leader because a salesperson needs to be a positive physical representation of all that a company is and aspires to be. By no means does a salesperson have to be perfect, but they need to be an expert in their industry and they need to understand both their company’s products & services and how they help their customers excel in their daily operations. One of the greatest benefits a salesperson performs is helping their customers use the company’s products and services to deliver a better service for the customer’s customers. Another core attribute that translates from the military role to a sales role is bringing your customer’s intelligence on how to deliver better to their customers or what the customer’s competitors are doing. Expertise, Intelligence, and dedication to the customer are common traits for both military professionalism and sales professionalism.
- Be Honest, Conscientious, Respectful & Have Strong Follow Up. Naming personal qualities of a solid military leader and a sales leader are startlingly similar. We want both to be honest, respectful, conscientious & dedicated to their duty, and have a strong follow up on outstanding issues. In the military, we want our leaders to look out for our personal and professional well-being. In sales, we want a salesperson to look out for the well-being and success of their customers. There is no difference in leadership qualities between military leaders and sales people in my opinion. Both are ethical, honest, and respectful of people and the organizations that they serve.
- Listen, Take Notes and Display Initiative When Seeking Solutions. The best salespeople and military leaders are often quiet. They are quiet because they are seeking to understand, take notes, listen to what their customers want, and then taking the initiative to generate ideas and options that their organizations can successfully accomplish. In my opinion, a poor salesperson and military leader are loud, boastful, and talk a “solution” before they even fully understand the problem that they are trying to solve. Listening is an underrated skill and a highly appreciated quality for both military and sales leaders. When someone listens, takes notes, ask questions, and then provides ideas for a solution based on what they heard, and not what they have done in the past, we know that person is there to help us find a solution, and not just to provide us an “easy” answer.
- Adjust & React to New Priorities Quickly. Adjusting to changes quickly is a quality the military and sales both experience together. Priorities change due to changes in leadership, actions exhibited by competitors, changes in priorities, changes in strategies, changes in budget, other personnel changes, and different ideas on what the organization needs “today.” Change happens and disrupts plans for leaders in both the military and in sales. What great military and sales leaders do is to react quickly and comprehensively to the changes and deliver another proposal quickly that meets the needs and expectations under the new strategy. Staying with the “old” plan helps no one. Delivering a new plan quickly that addresses the changes in strategy / budget / priorities helps everyone succeed.
- Advocate for Your Customer to Create Loyalty. In the military and in business, loyalty is the best outcome. In the military, loyalty goes “down the line” from military leaders before it comes back up. Lower ranking military personnel need to see, trust, and experience loyalty from their leaders before they provide their loyalty in return. Likewise, for a salesperson and a business, customer loyalty provides the greatest financial rewards for a business and a company. If I create loyalty in a customer, then that customer trusts my products and services and I know I need to be an incredibly strong internal advocate for that customer in my business organization. Loyalty to those led and from / to customers are some of the best personal and business outcomes that military and sales leaders can achieve.
Author, Career Coach, Columnist, Advocate, Veteran
6 年Throughout my career in military-to-civilian career transition guidance and placement, I found that two out of ten of my candidates walked in the door expressing an interest in starting their civilian careers in sales. After getting to know them, the ratio should have been five out of ten. ?The three that should have but didn't ended up in sales after all. ?Why is this? ?For most military personnel, sales is a four letter word. For half of them, it should not be. For the other half, do not forget that interviewing is selling. ?You may not want to go into sales but you should prepare for your job search as if you do want that option. ?In my book, OUT OF UNIFORM: Your Guide to a Successful Military to Civilian Career Transition, Second Edition 2018 (www.out-of-uniform.com) I address this important iissue in more than one chapter. ?Good Hunting!
Veteran Employment Specialist | South West Ohio
6 年Very good ideas for looking at your skills in a different light... Cheers
Senior Director at Gartner, Research and Advisory
6 年Michael, Ted and Cliff - thanks for the great comments and additions!
Enterprise Account Executive at Armis specializing in real-time visibility and threat detection for all managed and unmanaged devices, including IT, IoT, and OT devices
6 年Well said, Chad! I would add that the attributes of a "thick skin" and "sense of humor and calmness in the face of adversity" are also military skills that lend themselves to Sales careers. They would probably fall under a category I would call "perspective". Relative to a lot of the stresses of military life/combat experience, the "emotional events" of a sales cycle are relatively small potatoes.
Helping Local Businesses Grow By Increasing Foot Traffic and Improving Online Presence
6 年Great article Chad! One of the best I've read on the subject. After spending time serving our country, I've found the points raised in your article to be true. As a former leader in the military, a lot of the skills I learned directly apply to running my consulting business and serving our clients.