Salesmanship

"I'm not a good talker.", "I have trouble facing people.", "I cannot stand rejection.",  are just some of the few but most common reasons why many people think that they are not cut out for sales and marketing. But I do not believe that sales and marketing is the domain of people who have glib tongues or for the callused face, or for people with dispassionate personalities. Such notions must have come from our observation that salespeople are mostly gregarious, outgoing and sweet-talkers.

People who are in sales are like you and me. They, too, have fears. They are not super-humans that are unmoved by adversities and difficulties. What sets them apart is the way they look and treat every situation. It does not matter whether the situation is good or bad because in any case, he is sure to benefit from it.

When I was still in grade school, when to become a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer seemed to be the “in” thing at the time, I asked my father why he wanted us to be salesmen than to be in those professions. He said, “You see, you only need to see a doctor when you’re sick. You call up an engineer to fix or shape up a broken engine. If you’re a salesman, if you like my product, I will sell more to you. If you don’t like my product, the more I will sell to you.”  In other words, salesmen find opportunity in good and bad times.

But what most people do not know is that, we are actually born to become salesmen. It is fair to say that it is the only profession that is attuned to the nature of man. The fact that we cry at the moment of birth is an act of salesmanship. It’s a way to win our mother’s attention for care or nourishment. And as we age, we groom and dress up to attract the opposite sex -- cajole and offer gifts to the person that we are attracted to are acts of selling. When we present ourselves, our resumes and credentials to potential employers are also all acts sales and marketing. When we present our ideas, or make an opinion of a thing or event, they are still salesmanship. Salesmanship is something that is inextricably a part of our everyday life.

Since the dawn of “push selling or marketing” (the selling of non-essential goods and vanity wares), companies have changed the way selling is done. They hired good-looking people with excellent speech to be their frontliners and spokespersons, dressed them up, trained them, and given them high-sounding titles as “product and marketing consultants”, “professional marketing representatives” and the likes. From then on, we looked at the sales profession to be reserved only for those who have the looks, the tongue, and the confidence, as if they are the only requirements to become one. We have glamorized the profession so much that many of us believe that some people are destined to be in sales and marketing while others to get stuck as stamp lickers all their life.

As I have said, we are born to be salesmen. We need to leverage that instinct to change the course of our life. We need to have the mentality of a salesman in order to become an entrepreneur. Remember, the richest people on this planet are salesmen. But we also need to change our mindset on the meaning of salesmanship. The man in suit with an accent of a butler is not always the look of a real salesman. 

A real salesman does not rely on his looks. He believes that a pleasing personality does not please a client who is in search for ways to solve a problem. A salesman believes that it’s always better to look for a solution to the problem of his clients than to problem about how he looks in front of them (clients).  In other words, real salesmen are problem-solvers not people pleasers.

A real salesman is a person who carries a dictionary with missing pages and has very limited vocabulary. Rejection is not in his vocabulary. He sees only objection – something that can be dealt with easily not by his eloquence of speech but by the elegance, belief and attribute of his products.

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