Why Everyone Should work in Sales at least Once

I took a part-time job on a whim during college that didn’t even require an interview. I was going to be handing out pamphlets for a new Chinese restaurant that had opened up near the college. I didn’t even know businesses were still promoting like this.

I was given a tote filled with over 500 pamphlets, told to distribute them to anyone and everyone, and come back within 4 hours to get paid. No further guidelines, no further restraints. As long as they took the pamphlet, I’d done my job. I was now in sales.

Now some of you are going to stop and say “well Fabio, weren’t you just marketing? What were they paying for? Why is that sales?” And I could go on to tell you how almost every role and function across an organization becomes a sale, but that’s a discussion for another time. For now, let’s consider that my sale in the simplest sense was selling them a pamphlet in exchange for the cost of their time.

There are entire schools of thought dedicated to explaining the psychology of making a sale and influencing others. But what I realized within my first hour of this job, and subsequent sales roles to come, was not just what it taught me about others, but what it made me realize about myself.

Knowing isn’t Being

One of the most intriguing aspects of a great salesman is that many people would be able to describe one to you. They know their client, they know their product, they know how to communicate and have presence without making you uncomfortable. And similarly, many would be able to describe a bad salesman to you. Pushy, unclear, tells you what he has versus what you need.

But knowing what something should be and being one are two very different things. I knew what a salesman should do to get these pamphlets in peoples hands, but I’d never actually done it myself yet.

And this is where my advice truly begins. Throw yourself in. Make yourself uncomfortable and you will grow exponentially. I stood there with 500 pamphlets and immediately challenged myself to think about the most optimal way to get these into people’s hands. And I failed, quickly and frequently.

Which leads to one of my favorite lessons across any practice, fail fast and iterate. I tried many things that day. Simply holding the pamphlet out to the passersby, waving them down, shouting out the name of the restaurant, asking them another question entirely, making eye contact, walking towards them. And all of this with just a simple goal to get that pamphlet in their hands and have them walk away with it.

And within one hour, I had already learned much more about how I was able to interact with humans. What they viewed as pushy versus trustworthy. How to get their attention. How to communicate what I was offering them.

But more importantly I realized that from that first hour to that last, I had changed myself. My sales persona. And your sales persona is perhaps the most important part of your entire sales pitch, because regardless of what I had for them in my hand, if my persona sucked, they’d never even consider it.

What do you Work for?

Fast-forward to my next sales job, still fresh out of college. Looking for something more to pass the time than build a career, I joined a large non-profit soliciting memberships on the streets of New York city. If ever there was a proving ground in sales, it was going to be stopping a New Yorker to ask them to sign-up to a subscription service for $15+ a month via credit card.

And I took that challenge head-on for a very simple reason. I knew that if I could sell this, then I could sell almost anything.

And indeed I did, I made more sales than the rest of my team of 6 combined in my first four hours. The formula was simple, and as an extrovert (or so they tell me) there was nothing holding me back from interacting with every New Yorker that waddled my way.

But here’s the thing that hit me like a truck by the end of my first week. I didn’t believe in the product. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure I believed in the philosophy behind the company or the product. From my perspective, at the end of the day, I was selling a warm fuzzy feeling.

I immediately began to imagine a scenario in which I was tasked to sell something of objective value. A blender, a car, a software product. Any of these things had a much more clearly defined need, and therefore a much easier demand to fill.

Needless to say, I didn’t stay in that role long. And in fact that realization is eventually what brought me to the insurance sector, where I could so clearly detail and understand exactly why each product existed in its own right, and why someone should buy them. If you need X you get Y.

But apart from the sales acumen it instilled upon me, it led me once again to find out something about myself. That as a prerequisite from now on, I would never work for an organization, whether in sales or any other capacity, if I didn’t believe in the product itself.

Sales, Sales, Everywhere and Everyone

Sales is most often described as not being for everyone. And maybe that is true in the long-term. But what is also true is that you won’t know it until you try it.

A lot of people will simplify sales tactics down to your persona and whether you’re loud or quiet, but in practice I’ve seen some of the most talented salespeople have the most varied personas. They’re not all Type-A, or bombastic, or get in your face Jordan Belfort types.

Sales as a practice is far more nuanced than most people care to admit. Simply because at the end of the day, the consumer can cynically view the outcome as a purchase that was instigated by the Salesperson.

But setting aside the philosophy and strategies of a salesman, I will always recommend that anyone joining the workforce give sales a try. Whether they know what they want to do or not. Sales is not only a complimentary tool of the trade, but it’s universally transferable, an exercise in communication and empathy, and is ultimately a part of every job role.

From CEO to Marketing Intern, I would argue that every role in the company is both an extension of the sales team, as well as a role that will have to practice sales tactics itself.

C-Suite leadership is constantly entangled with the selling and positioning of their products. If they can’t paint the product picture correctly then the organization will have no strategy to do it top-down. Internally, every position in a company no matter how large or small has to vie for attention, resources and priority through a series of micro-sales occurring daily within the organization.

I’ve often had conversations with Project Managers, Engineers, and Product Managers discussing how timelines for XYZ are behind because of ABC. Well, ABC often occurs for a reason, and it’s usually the outcome of a negotiation. Either due to a lack of resources, or lack of planning and time on the frontend.

Managing stakeholders is no different than managing the expectations of a client you’re selling to. Learn to negotiate your outcomes as you would a sale and you’ll become infinitely more successful in achieving coordinated results with your teams and organizations.

The Takeaway

I strongly encourage those contemplating whether or not sales is right for them to at a minimum take the leap and try it out. Because my hunch, is that you won’t find it to be such a drastic leap, and at the very least you’ll be adding one of the world’s most universal weapons to your arsenal.

The skillset required for sales roles goes hand in hand with understanding one of the most prominent and powerful human emotions - empathy. And therefore, to be an effective salesperson, you end up answering questions about how you would sell to yourself. And in turn, can learn quite a bit about yourself.