Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2010, during the economic crisis in Spain (falling sales, layoffs of factory and office staff, fewer shoppers in stores). The claim that sales is a profession with no unemployment reflects that moment and the author’s own experience.
Whatever people may say, the pillars of a company that sells things are not the general manager or the supervisors: they are its sales reps and salespeople. Right now we can say that this is a profession with no unemployment.
But sales reps are like any other profession: some are true professionals and some are average. Some are well trained and some are beginners. Some are well paid, and some come cheap. Of the sales reps I know, people who were once my colleagues or whom I ran into as competitors in the market, every one of those we considered real professionals is still working.
While companies are having to let go of whole groups of workers, such as factory staff, secretaries, administrative staff and supervisors, because sales have fallen and they consider that staff non-productive, this is exactly when they look for the best sales reps to open up more markets for them and bring in new customers and new accounts.
Of course, in some places people think that whoever can’t do anything else ends up working in sales, while elsewhere being a sales rep is a top-tier profession, because it comes with a salary plus commissions that put no ceiling on your earnings.
To be a professional in this field, you need some innate talents and some knowledge of the art of selling and negotiation, of mental control, of reading people, and so on. There’s no need to worry if you weren’t born with those talents, because nowadays there are professionals who can turn you into salesperson of the year. I worked in this profession for a long time, and I can tell you that I was one of the best in my sector because I learned from the best.
Once you learn a few sales techniques, you can sell any product without resorting to the typical marketing you’ll see some salespeople use.
The difference between a store salesperson and a sales rep
- A store salesperson works in a shop and waits for customers to come in and ask about a product. Their sales are limited, because they depend on the people who walk in already inclined to buy. These days their job is at risk, because fewer people are interested in buying anything.
- A sales rep goes out to find customers, so they will always have customers. They find out what the customer needs, and if the customer has no needs, they create them. They offer a product the customer may not even have known about. And most importantly, they work with a very small margin of error. If a sales rep goes out with the right know-how, 1 in 4 visits ends in a sale. So if you put a sales rep in a store salesperson’s place and a customer who is already inclined to buy walks in, 3 out of 4 such customers would end up buying without a second thought.
This may be hard to grasp, even for someone who works in sales, but I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it and I’ve done it.
That said, any job should be done out of a sense of vocation. How can you tell what kind of work you’d excel at?
Featured image: Worlee Glover, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
