Over the past several weeks, I’ve gotten into a number of discussions about the “economics of selling.” They’ve covered the gamut from rationalizing what we spend on sales and sales people, affordability and how much we can invest, to optimizing the investment we make in sales, assuring we get return on those investments.
In one conversation, a statement struck me, “Sales people have to pay their own way.”
All of a sudden, it struck me that the reality is sales people have to pay the way for everyone in the company, not just paying their own way. Stated differently, everyone’s job in our companies are dependent on sales people doing their jobs. If we don’t, people in the company lose their jobs.
Sales people are responsible for driving revenue and achieving the company’s revenue goals. Whether we are in a product business, a service business, a hybrid, there are people and investments needed to deliver what our customers are buying. There are developers creating new products and services, enabling us to present new offerings, continuing to grow our revenue. Then there are the operations, finance, HR and others providing support to everyone else, helping keep things running.
It’s really a very tight ecosystem, with each part depending on the other to do their jobs. One part breaks down, or fails, and the whole enterprise is put at risk.
But all of this starts with the first dollar of revenue and continues with each additional dollar of revenue sales creates.
Sales has to pay their own way. Sales has to drive the revenue necessary to pay everyone else’s way, supporting the company’s ability to meet it’s goals.
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