Suppose I had this box of knives. Or that car. Or this whozit. I want to exchange my product for your money; viz, a sale. Making me a salesman.
Suppose I had this company that rents billboard space, and your cornfield that abuts Highway 69 is prime real estate for a primo billboard, so let’s talk about a lease, and I’ll also talk to your neighbors if you’re not interested. Or I had a strip club and I want to paint the side of your barn with a silhouette of a nekkid hottie and directions so truckers on Highway 420 can see it. Or whatever. You have something that I want and I come to you out of nowhere with the offer of a deal. I’m not a salesman, I’m a: _______?
In general I think buyer is a good term. That’s what we call people in the company whose job it is to find and negotiate with suppliers (technically the procurement department, but “procurer” has some negative connotations).
For advertising there might be some specialized lingo…
Buyer. In a business to business transaction, the seller of the vendor company is dealing with the buyer of the customer company. But we call the seller role a “salesperson”. We just call the buyer role a “buyer”. That’s the standard job title.
As noted, if middlemen are involved, it gets messier with agent and other words often used. But those words are more about describing the fact of they (or their employer) being a middleman than the role they as individuals play in the transaction with the would-be seller who’s being approached.
If the OP’s question isn’t hypothetical or is specifically about somebody trying to obtain space for advertising, such as highway billboards or barn sides, well then advertising industry standard terminology may differ. And that’s not a level of detail I’m competent to comment on in FQ.
Is the “vendor” the company, or the company’s point person who contacts the customer company’s point person?
For sure all this is different if two Fortune 500 entities are buying / selling with one another versus two one-person sole proprietorships. But most business dealings are with entities somewhere in the middle where both contact people are employees, not principals.
Which case the OP meant to address is so far a mystery. In at least his chosen examples the seller was an individual sole prop and the buyer probably was not.
There is money involved, right? The owner of the barn or cornfield expects you to offer him something in exhange for using his property to paint a nekkid lady or construct a billboard sign.
So you are a businessman, selling a business opportunity to someone who will probably demand a monthly fee for using his property.
That’s a salesman, isn’t it? Or maybe “seller” is a better word.
I think salesman refers to a person who makes deals regularly as a full time job. A seller is a person making a one-time deal, like when a private person sells his car.
They can be called a project manager. A project can be any task - from ‘build me a fully functional nationally significant public hospital’ to ‘Get us the best deal on paper for our copier’ or ‘Find me a barn for some naked hottie painting’.
A project manager’s job is to do the job, know when to use their initiative, when to report back to the client and when to ask for further instructions. If there is a budget or a program then their job is to stick to it, or tell their client they need more or change their expectations. The project manager building a giant hospital will have a fleet of minion project managers, each with jobs that gradually get ticked off towards the main goal. They can have any career background, but they all have professional hammers - a construction project may benefit from having a PM who is a former builder, but they could benefit more from someone different who doesn’t assume norms and tests assumptions and positions.
It might be their own job, but usually project managers work for the client, so that they don’t have to.
One of the problems is that usually buyers in purchasing departments have sales people coming to them, so buyers spend more time qualifying vendors rather than trying to convince someone to take their money.
In terms of what they are doing, their actual work is closer to cold calling, something sales people (including me in a previous career) are much more familiar with than most buyers.
So the question was inspired by a “reality” show that was on in the doctor’s office break room. These antiques guys were traveling around the country looking for unique barn finds or whatever, to buy from the owner and (presumably) sell them at their shop for a higher price.* Profit!
Thing is, some communities require door to door salespeople to register. I was curious if what these guys are doing is a violation of these types of ordinances. Since they’re not, you know, selling.
*Yes I know these things are mostly staged. Work with me here.
I doubt the ordinance makes such a fine distinction on “sales”. I’d bet dollars to donuts the language says something general like “conducts business” or “commerce” or “soliciting” or something.
I would avoid this term because it can cause confusion - in a number of Commonwealth countries, a “solicitor” is a lawyer. The etymology is, of course, connected to the verb “solicit”: A solicitor takes care of someone’s (legal) business.
Either. Typically the company doing the selling is called the “subcontractor” and the point person is called the “POC” (point of contact). The term “vendor” is sloppily used for either.
Solicitor also has the meaning of prostitute. Procurer has a sexual connotation as well, as the person who provides prostitutes. Procurer would be a good term for the OP’s antiques guys except that it’s lost its original general meaning.
Middleman would work. If a non-gendered alternative was preferred how about intermediary or go-between or reseller. Dealer is correct, and is used for everything from car dealer to drug dealer, people who buy cheap and sell dear. Wholesaler is technically accurate but we usually use it for procurers who sell only to businesses, not customers.