Preface: I met Enrico Nebbia as a result of publishing these artices. He reached out, asking if he could share his story. Like many others, selling wasn’t something he naturally gravitated to. But over a career, he eventually found himself thrilled with selling. One line stood out, “But the most powerful reason is because sales make me feel useful.”
This is the question David Brock has asked a few salespeople…
I also respond to the invitation. In several previous posts, I had already alluded to some of these aspects but had never gone into so much detail.
I’m afraid that to answer the question, I have to first give a long explanation of how I came into the world of sales.
I need to explain it because, at the beginning of my working life, I really hated sales.
But maybe it’s not that I truly hated it. One cannot hate without knowledge, and back then, I knew absolutely nothing about sales.
In my household, sales were never discussed, even though my father had a company with some partners. It turned out that my father was the creative one, and another partner was the salesperson, so I never had the opportunity (nor the curiosity) to familiarize myself with sales.
I studied a 100% technical career, so that didn’t help me get to know that world either.
In my first jobs, I was involved in technical aspects “of an engineer,” and sales were “there,” providing us work, sometimes not very successfully, and in all cases without understanding much about what we did – or so it seemed to us “technicians.”
I was (and in many ways, still am) a thoughtful, introverted, and somewhat insecure person. And it seemed to me that to be in sales, I had to be exactly the opposite, the antithesis, of what I was. If being a salesperson is being the opposite of what I am, then, of course, it scared me a lot.
And that explains why I didn’t get into sales when I was young. Rather, I ran away from it.
Later, I grew professionally in management consulting services where consultants are progressively called to contribute to sales efforts. But I was not very good at it, never received any training, and in all these stages, I never found inspiring or particularly effective sales figures.
Years passed, and everything I saw and experienced confirmed my fear and rejection of sales. “It’s some kind of dark art for which I’m not made” – I thought – “One is born a salesperson, and clearly, it has not been my case. I must have been born to be a techie, freaky, or artist, but not a salesperson.”
Until things began to change, and I started to get to know sales more closely.
In the strangest way, I had to do a consulting project to improve the management of sales teams of a company in the food sector…
I was reasonably worried: I had never sold anything. Yes, I had been bought a couple of times, but I think more by oversight than anything else. Besides, I knew nothing about the sector…
Perhaps it was because I was so ignorant of everything that I looked at the problem with beginner’s eyes and invented a solution that has been replicated in many other companies and industries and is today embodied in a sales management software (www.executionpro.com)
One thing led to another, and I continued to focus on managing salespeople, supporting CEOs, and CSOs.
I started to know quite a bit about the processes, systems, and tools for managing salespeople, but about selling itself, I still knew little.
Until it was sell or not pay the bills, and, without mentors or successful examples to imitate and inspire me – of negatives, I had many – I had no choice but to discover, study, delve into what I now consider the best profession in the world, and in which I intend to stay.
I would have liked to get to it sooner, but if it hasn’t been possible, it’s because I wasn’t ready.
I needed a personal and professional divorce to finally change my way of being and seeing the world and my role in it. From introverted, I have become ambiverted, and I have transformed insecurity into a desire to improve myself. The reflective aspect has remained.
These changes have led me to be interested in and passionate about psychology, personal development, productivity, communication, and a few other things that, curiously, are very aligned with Sales.
So, after this long journey, in the most convoluted way possible, reluctantly, and with quite a few professional years already invested in totally different activities, I finally arrived at sales.
And it happened to me like my grandfather: it seems he always rejected mayonnaise because he detested it, until one day by mistake he tried it and discovered that he loved it. Surely he must have regretted not having tried it earlier.
That’s how I feel: if only I had known and suspected what I know now…
So, after so much explanation, why am I so interested in sales?
The most obvious and very personal reason is because sales have been and continue to be the engine of this transformation of mine from the person I was 30 years ago to who I am today. And what remains! No other activity – and I have tried a few: from software development to procurement consultant – has made me grow so much personally and professionally.
I am fascinated by the sophistication of sales: there are many keys that can indeed be tremendously complex, mixing processes, methodologies, discipline, and psychology. This complexity at the confluence of so many disciplines constantly challenges me – when I think I have learned and mastered something, a new level and unsuspected key to reading appears on the horizon.
There is always a higher level to improve towards.
And the interesting thing is that in many cases, that improvement first requires personal evolution.
Sales is scientific enough not to be an art anymore, but indeterminate enough never to become a science. And that’s why I never get bored – each client can be a world, and the appropriate approach with one does not necessarily work with another similar one.
But the most powerful reason is because sales make me feel useful.
Without sales, there is nothing – no progress or improvement for clients, our clients’ clients, etc. Everyone stays where they were, with obsolete products or ways of doing things that no longer suit them.
Although no one can ever know for sure what the future is made of, I bet that my professional future will be in sales.
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