I Never Wanted To Be A Salesman

"Sell me this pencil", said the Sales Manager at AT&T (now Verizon) at my job interview

That was my initiation into sales...

And the primary reason why I never wanted to be a salesperson.

There, I said it!

I resisted countless nudges to become a salesperson by early mentors in the first 5 years of my career.

Frankly, I detested the notion of trying to talk someone into buying something.

I still do.

And, I still won’t.

It seemed manipulative.

I had no intention of becoming the second incarnation of Ron Popeil.

For the non-BabyBoomers out there, Popeil, based in Chicago, brought the world the Dial-O-Matic, the Chop-O-Matic, and the Veg-O-Matic.

Starting out in my career getting a sales job was relatively easy for me.

This ease had the insidious effect of making it seem that much less alluring.

Sort of my “nothing worth having comes easy” attitude.

The first hurdle for a young person starting their career in becoming a salesperson is not too high for anybody who is personable, competitive, and pleasant looking.

When I started out in the pre-internet era (aka 'back in the day') it was much easier for guys who could handle a 3 martini lunch.

I wasn’t that guy.

The only time I tried to be that guy, by keeping up with a hard-drinking grizzled purchasing agent for StorageTek, I failed miserably.

I somehow drove home from The Boulder Broker – pre-Uber - to eventually find myself sleeping the martini’s off in bed at 3 o’clock in the afternoon still in my 3 piece suit.

Sales 101 for Dummies was not out yet.

Early in my career, I thought that becoming a salesman was my only commercial career path to real financial success; especially armed only with a degree in Psychology/minor in Education.

Hence, I grudgingly accepted my first sales job offer.

I never really considered sales to be a “profession”.

Growing up I had no college educated salesman role models.

The only people I looked up to were just blue collar “good eggs” and cousin Frankie.

Frankie was a guy from Laconia Avenue in the shiny suit who was reputed to tip really well at Gambino’s.

Think Goodfella’s.

But, I digress.

Nobody in my immediate, or extended family, ever went to college.

In the Precambrian era being a salesman did not necessarily require going to college.

So, mostly due to vicarious parental pressure, I was “encouraged” to become an engineer, or an accountant, or some other college educated profession that I had ZERO interest in.

The only salesman I could relate this vocation to was Willy Loman, the lugubrious character in Arthur Miller’s “Death Of A Salesman”.

Willy was, by most modern measures of success (aka $), a failure.

To deal with his own subconscious feelings of failure he created a narrative in his own mind that was disproportionate to reality.

Sadly, his final effort to create a lasting legacy for his loved ones was by committing suicide so that he could leave behind a life insurance payout for his sons.

So, that was what I thought about the sales profession.

Largely self-delusion, 80% talking / 20% listening, and a miserable existence.

Then you die.

Not exactly something to emulate.

Call Sandman Sims at The Apollo as I’m exiting stage left.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Due to something called life – i.e. baby needs shoes, food, rent, car payment, school loan – I miraculously passed an audition with a recruiter from Sales Consultants in Elmsford, NY and found myself in sales; luckily, with a very prestigious global electronics company called AMP (now TE Connectivity).

After 3 months of sink or swim – fail any trimester and you’re hasta la vista, baby - training in Harrisburg, PA, while enjoying a front row seat when Three Mile Island went off, I was sent to Colorado to become a sales engineer.

At the very least the title had a palatable cachet.

Engineer.

A justification for going to college besides baseball, free love, and Thursday night 6 packs of Carling Black Label.

First one in my family.

School loan validated.

Check!

For the first 15 years of my sales career I could never shake the notion that I was not fulfilling a worthy life aspiration or making a meaningful contribution to society and others.

Sure, as a former competitive D1 college athlete, I liked winning a sale.

Actually, I probably hate losing more than I like winning.

So, I did well by most measures of success; aka money.

However, that did not stop me from perpetually seeking a higher meaning for my life.

Something that was a true reflection of my own definition of intellectual self-worth and success.

Welcome to an MBA and Viktor Frankl's 'Logotherapy'.

Logotherapy is just a fancy term for 'healing through meaning'.

Then, I read a book by Dr. Mark Epstein called “Going On Being”.

That's a pretty typical read in Boulder as it has the subtitle “Buddhism and the Way of Change”.

The great takeaway for me from Epstein was to “stop trying to fulfill other’s expectations for ME”.

With that bit of introspection, it actually turns out that sales (and marketing) is probably the fulfillment of my own expectations for myself.

I’m OK with that bit of sublimation.

It just so happens that it also dovetails extremely well with my education in psychology and education, how I enjoy helping others with their problems, and my own feelings of self-worth.

In other words, I am a person whose default reaction to people struggling with the human condition is “what’s in it for THEM”.

Training in behavioral and organizational psychology, and the eventual realization that all good sales and marketing behavior are two pursuits that truly value satisfying the problems of others, was my “aha moment”.

Better late than never.

So, I now take great pride that I’ve been a really good salesperson, and love mentoring those who wish to be good at this also.

Empathy, solving other people’s problems, and compassion are core competencies of every great salesperson I've ever met.

The skillset of a truly professional salesperson includes knowledge of psychology, behavioral economics, self-awareness, philosophy, education, and a myriad of other skills.

Given that salespeople all deal with humans, a heightened awareness of a person’s feelings will be the guiding skill any good salesperson needs to influence an individual to make a decision.

No matter how technically esoteric a product or service is, “people buy off feelings”.?

The myopic notion of quite a few highly educated deep-tech B2B founders is that “they will build it and he will come”.

However, this mindset trivializes and denigrates the core processes, professionalism, and work of the sales and marketing professional.

As Simon Sinek has famously made popular, products and companies fare better when they realize it’s mostly about satisfying the “why” people buy, and not focusing exclusively on the “what” or “how”.

That is, it’s all about “them” BEFORE it can be about “you”.

So, ergo, the best salespeople are experts at feeling and understanding human emotion; i.e. nuance...and understanding that communication is often more about hearing what's not being said.

All sales solutions solve an often challenging problem, and with any challenge comes emotion.

If you attempt to solve a problem as a salesperson by just beating people over the head with facts and minutiae but don’t understand the emotion, you’ll probably lose the sale.

The feelings and emotions attached to the problem drive the outcome more than the problem itself.

To wrap this up, it’s the rare person who can master the diverse skills necessary to become a great salesperson.

It’s a profession worth pursuing.

How’s that for a 180?