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Selling, The Lost Art:
Today’s Cutting-Edge Companies Are Redefining The Role Of The Sales Force

By Mark W. Sheffert
September 2002

I was the envy of every adolescent boy in the neighborhood where I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, but not because of my brains or brawn, as I would have liked to think. Rather, it was because of my
father’s unique career. He wasn’t a heroic firefighter, a brave policeman, or even a daring racecar driver. He was a ladies undergarment salesman.

As a manufacturer’s representative, my father traveled throughout the Midwest with samples of the latest in ladies intimate apparel. He sold bras and girdles to department stores in big cities like Minneapolis and in smaller ones, including Dubuque, Iowa, and Rapid City, South Dakota. He drove his Chevy Biscayne (without air conditioning) from town to town with his samples in the trunk, sleeping in a different motel every night.

Unfortunately, my dad suffered from a degenerative spinal disorder and was partially disabled for a good part of my boyhood. He needed assistance to carry his heavy sample bags, so I spent my summers traveling in a hot car across the prairie, while my friends back home played sports and goofed off. But, although I didn’t realize it then, I was the true beneficiary of this work.

Dad and I soon developed a routine. We’d go into a store, sit down with the manager, and they’d visit for a while. Soon the conversation would turn to bras and girdles, with Dad touting the finer points of his products. I always thought he sounded pretty smart, pretty convincing. How could anyone not agree with my father? Then I’d get the nod from “Pops” and I would jump into action, eager for my moment of glory. I would sprint out to the car and haul the sample bags into the store, where Dad would proudly show his goods to the customer.

More often than not, the next step would be for Dad and the customer to fill out some papers, get signatures, and shake hands. We’d leave the store with my father smiling and then I’d know it had been a good call. The times we didn’t get through the whole routine, he’d just quietly say when we got back into the car that it didn’t work out so well that time, but . . . . he’d made progress.

I was only 18 when my father passed away, and although I didn’t know it then, I had been learning the art of selling during those long summer days at his side. And I was learning from a master; my father was one of his company’s top salespeople. He was successful because he built relationships, understood his customer’s needs, was creative in solving their problems, and communicated the benefits and features of his products.

He was also persistent, yet courteous. One customer told him that he had had a bad experience with the company and would never, ever buy anything from it again. My dad calmly explained why his products were superior and that this customer would not be competitive without them, thereby doing himself a disservice. He added that an entire company shouldn’t be judged based on one bad experience. After visiting this customer two more times, Dad got an order.

As is often the case with father and son, I didn’t always appreciate my father’s wisdom until I became an adult. There is an old stigma attached to the word “sales” that conjures up images of high-pressure salespeople peddling encyclopedias, pots and pans, and used cars. But through his means of selling, my father taught me how to listen, overcome objections, accept it when someone says “no”, and influence and motivate people. Those are valuable skills in any career. Many professionals are trained at law schools, business schools, or medical schools to do their work without ever learning the art of dealing with or influencing people.

The importance of the sales role became apparent several years ago when everyone was becoming a “dot com”. Many executives, eager to cut expenses, questioned whether they needed a sales force. Especially in business-to-business selling environments, the conventional wisdom was that the future was entirely in e-commerce. Why would anyone need a sales force (that expected to be paid salary and commission) when they could have a Web site? If salespeople are only information distributors, and if all the information that customers need is on the Web site, who needs a sales force?

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I think we’ve since learned that e-commerce has its limitations. According to Giga Information Group, an IT advisory firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, nearly two-thirds of business-to-business sales in 2004 will come through person-to-person selling -- despite huge growth in e-commerce -- because customers want to know the people they buy from.

My favorite business guru, Peter Drucker, said “the end of business is to create a customer”. I think he was talking about sales.

My firm has worked with many companies that hit the wall because they didn’t know how to sell. They thought all they needed was a really cool product, and they probably had a really cool product, but nobody was selling it. They were waiting for the phones to ring and for someone on the other end to buy. They failed to realize that a company will fail if nobody is out there talking to customers and making things happen.

The traditional view of selling hasn’t changed much since the days when my father peddled bras across the Midwest. While manufacturing processes have undergone major technological changes, and the backbone of every business is an IT system that didn’t even exist 10 years ago, the sales function remains the same. Salespeople might travel by plane now with laptop computers and cell phones, but most sales forces are still organized by customer types and/or geography, are compensated by salary plus commission, and are expected to inform customers of the features and benefits of a product or service.

By contrast, today’s cutting-edge companies understand the art of selling. They are redefining the role of “sales”. Their focus is on reinforcing customer relationships and creating value for customers, recognizing that “one size fits all” doesn’t cut it anymore. Some have re-organized by customer, instead of customer type, product, or territory. Others are learning as much as they can about their most profitable customers in order to tailor their products and services to them, giving each customer exactly what it wants. These companies are training their sales forces in the art of selling, and are motivating them and giving them more accountability. In addition, many are hiring, training, motivating, and retaining employees throughout their businesses who know how to take
special care of customers, believing that every person in the company has a role in the selling process.

In a slow economy, many companies complain about how tough it is to sell their products and services. They rationalize that it’s okay for sales to be down because everyone else's sales are off, too. I’ll never forget one of my first sales lessons during the early days of my career in the financial services industry. This was in the 1970s, when the economy was really in the dumps. I was still wet behind the ears, sitting in a meeting with the big dogs, when the executive vice president of sales started to ask the sales guys (they were all guys back then) about why sales were down. They blamed the economy, complaining that nobody had money to buy anything during those tough times.

After a while, he had heard enough. He was a tall man with a deep voice, and became even more imposing as he unfolded his 6’ 4” frame and towered over the table.

“Let me ask you a few questions to see if I can better understand your issues,” he said. “Are you making the same number of sales calls that you usually do?” Yes, everyone answered, of course.

“Are you scheduling the same number of meetings that you usually do?” he asked. Yes, everybody said, of course.

“Are you closing the same number of times that you usually do?” he asked. Yes, yes, of course, everybody said, nodding his head.

After a moment of silence, he bellowed, “Well, that’s exactly the problem! When the economy is bad, you have to work twice as hard and do twice as much as you usually do. When you get up to shave tomorrow, you will be looking at your greatest obstacle in the mirror. So stop your whining and double your activities!”

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “Society is always taken by surprise by any new example of common sense.” I think my father would have agreed.

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