Preface: Chris Palmissano and I “met” a number of years ago. We started sharing ideas about sales performance, particulalry in some of his early leadership and entrepreneurial roles. We continue those conversations to today. A line that stood out, “If you accept sales is about moving people, then it becomes easy to stay positive about selling. You start to see sales everywhere.”
Why am I interested in selling?
Selling is about moving people. I heard a story on a podcast about how an insurance salesperson wasn’t able to convince a pair of young parents they needed or could benefit from life insurance. As fate would have it, the young parents were killed in a car accident a few months later. It’s an awful story, but it illustrates how important “moving people” really is. If you accept sales is about moving people, then it becomes easy to stay positive about selling. You start to see sales everywhere.
I think a lot of the negative attitudes are the result of changing conditions in the job. There’s more systems and technology than ever before. Outbound is essentially broken for all but a handful of sellers. Everyone is doing inbound now, so it isn’t much of a differentiator. Partner teams were hit exceptionally hard in the latest waves of layoffs. Sales managers can barely keep up. I suspect the attitudes are a signal that the roles, and to some extent, our world is changing.
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