You see ‘Sales people’ everywhere.
You see them in shops, retail outlets, malls, banks, street markets and wherever you go.
A sales person whether he sells ice-creams in the street market or sells high-end industrial equipments, he generates revenue by selling products to the customers. This revenue is then used to pay the employees, vendors and for other obligations of the company.
Thus, ‘Selling’ is a very important and respectable profession, irrespective of what the sales person sells.
This article will make you aware of 5 common myths related to the sales profession and the truth behind those myths.
i. Students who are average or below average join ‘Sales’
This myth is something which is very often said, even by the sales people themselves. And the sales people who say this, perhaps do not know their own worth.
It can never happen that a company selects a candidate for its sales team because he has scored poorly in his school and college.
You need to know that sales profession needs candidates with excellent interpersonal skills, who can build relationships easily.
Technical jobs like ‘Research’, ‘Manufacturing’, ‘Design’, ‘Accounting’ need candidates to score high marks. These jobs do need interpersonal skills but not to the extent that are required in a sales job.
Ironically, you would observe that the students in your school and college who had excellent interpersonal skills, were not the top scorers in your class.
This is where the education system needs a complete overhaul because you cannot term a student who scores low marks in subjects like mathematics and science, as an average or below average student.
In fact, students who have better interpersonal skills are more employable because they need to work in a team after they get employed. And a team gets stronger when it has members who have high inter-personal skills, as it helps the organisation to achieve its objectives smoothly and easily.
You can say that a student who has very high interpersonal skills but does not score well in the subjects like mathematics and science, is a student who is more inclined towards non-technical jobs like ‘Sales’, ‘Marketing’ and ‘Management’.
You can also say that a politician who is the head of his country and is called as ‘President’ or ‘Prime Minister’ of his country is also a sales person who tries his best to improve the image of his country and does his best to generate revenue by persuading other countries to invest in his country in order to grow his country’s economy.
You can say that successful sales people are the ones who have extraordinary interpersonal skills but are not necessarily the top scorers in subjects like Mathematics and Science.
ii. Successful Sales people sell anything very easily
It is a myth that successful sales people can sell anything to anyone.
Do you think it is possible even in anyone’s dreams?!
You find successful people to be very charismatic, as they have very high interpersonal skills but it does not mean that they can sell anything to their prospective customers, even if they do not need it.
The fact is that, a successful sales person can create a need for his prospective customer.
Imagine that you are a sales person who sells body weighing machine. Your prospective buyer already has a body weighing machine and does not need any such machine anymore.
In this case, you will be successful as a sales person, when you can create a need for this prospective buyer.
The need can be to gift this new weighing machine to a friend or a relative, or to get a new body weighing machine in exchange of the existing one.
‘Creating the need’ is an important part of selling process and a successful sales person is very good at it.
iii. Sales person needs to meet more people to generate more sales
This is a myth which needs to be eliminated from the minds of the sales managers who pressurize the less experienced sales representatives to meet more prospective buyers in order to generate more sales.
How can a sales person build long lasting relationships with his buyer, when he treats him as just another buyer?!
A sales person would face mental and physical fatigue after meeting specific number of buyers or prospective buyers each day, which would certainly have effect on his ability to build good relationships with his prospects.
Though meeting number of clients on each day varies from industry to industry, for example in FMCG (Fast moving consumer goods) industry, the number of meetings is higher than in case of industrial equipment industry, but nevertheless the focus needs to be on relationship building.
There needs to be a balance between meeting number of clients on each day and building relationship with them. Because even to create the need for the client to buy the product, the sales person needs to build certain level of trust with the client which can happen by spending some quality time with him.
iv. Smart Sales person sells easily, he does n’t have to work hard
If you are in sales profession, then you would have heard this many times.
The truth is that a successful sales person does the basics right, and this seems like hard work to some and smart work to some people.
“A successful sales person knows how to make the iron hot and when to hit it”. What this means is that a successful sales person knows how to create a need for the client for his product and when to follow up with his client to close the deal.
In many companies, sales people need to go on tours which involve travelling during the night and then meeting the client during the daytime.
In fact, some sales people try to get out of this profession because extensive travelling affects their health, as they have to spend sleepless nights travelling to their destinations.
But the successful sales person takes care of his health and makes such extensive travelling look like a joy ride.
This is because the successful sales person knows when to eat and how much to eat, whenever he has to travel long distances. So travelling such long distances makes him even more disciplined when it comes to his eating habits.
A successful sales person takes care of his health specifically because he understands that missing a working day due to illness is like missing a day full of opportunities.
In fact, there is nothing like smart work or hard work, it is all about doing the basics right.
If you know anyone who is a top performing sales professional, then what you would call him now?
A smart working sales person or a hard working sales person or a sales person who does the basics right!
v. Marketing is pre-sales
How many times, you have heard this myth?
I have heard this for years! This myth kept me confused about what is ‘Sales’ and what is ‘Marketing’ until I found out myself during my MBA programme.
In fact, few years back this myth used to make rounds among the students who used to do their masters in ‘Marketing’ management and I came to know about it, as some of them were my friends.
Marketing is a very broad term which includes activities that range from understanding the client’s requirement to maintaining relationship with the client even after the sale (that is, even after selling the product).
So activities like market research, advertising, selling (that is, generating sales), ‘After-sales’ services are all part of marketing.
If you are an MBA marketing student, then you have saved your valuable time by learning about what is ‘Marketing’ and what is ‘Sales’ in this article and have busted this myth.
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