Are most Sales people like Rocket Singh?

The Ranbir Kapoor movie set a new benchmark on a realistic take on how the direct sales industry functions at an elementary level. How have we evolved from the good old cold-calling visits to the usually-by-appointment culture of today? The direct sales industry, particularly in personal selling products like credit cards and other consumer products has moved on from the "tap-them-at-their-workplace-or-home" strategy to "tap-them-when-they-come-to-the-mall/multiplex/railway station/airport or in some cases, when they are simply taking a walk in their society compound" strategy. Gone are the (good or bad?) old days when the best salesperson was the one who could get an "entry" in a large organization or society to tap all its employees or residents on a daily basis.

While institutional selling has not evolved too much except from an analogue to digital format of presenting and pursuing the sale, personal selling has undergone a sea change to the extent that now there really is not the old type of personal selling happening at all. As someone who cut his teeth in the big (good or bad?) world of personal selling with financial products, this writer cannot help contemplating whether the change is positive. Pesky Callers transcending our DND status have lent a bad name to the fine art of conducting a professional sale for a personal product. "Salesmen not welcome" signs on doors of a lot of offices, apart from their sexist nature, are also an indication of the attitude which most people have towards the sales profession and indeed towards those IN the profession of sales. Yet the truth is that the SALES department is the one which brings in all the Vitamin M in the organization. While a below-par performance from any other department can be hazardous too, a consistent sub-par performance from Sales is sure to spell doom for the long-term future of the company.

Most people still view sales people with some form of suspicion. A hangover of the snake-oil salesperson persona which permeates all thing sales. And Leonardo DiCaprio mouthing the perfect snake-oil pitch to sell penny stocks in The Wolf of Wall Street did not help the poor salesperson's image much either :) Yet most professional Sales personnel I know are intrinsically honest, even if at times over-eager. Stress of TARGETS to be met and BACKLOGS to be made up does take its toll, yet through it all if you cannot maintain your own personal integrity, you were not much of a salesperson to begin with. The fine art of selling with impeccable honesty seems to be diminishing but is certainly not dead, but alive and kicking. Its just that wherever it exists and is successful, the success gets credited to the wrong qualities like suaveness, or "presentability" or deep product knowledge. Yes, these are all very important qualities to have but the most important one is the ability to make the client TRUST you because of your honesty and integrity. Nothing else can match that mother-of-all abilities.

Finally all of us who have done Management courses, know of the Ps of marketing. There were 4 Ps viz. Product, Price, Promotion and Placement, then they became 5 with Positioning added and so on and so forth, last heard we had lost count of the Ps. So those of us still in the old-school sales profession, you would find one P common to all successful and professional sales people, That P is PRIDE. They are proud to be in sales knowing its not everyone's cup of tea. One of the most difficult professions in the world, maybe apart from a nuclear device engineer who assembles and disassembles them, is getting money out of another person's pocket, and that too legally and willingly without exaggerating or lying. THAT is an art form worth preserving.