No doubt I’ll be flamed for this post:
It is a job. Albeit a job that many dopers would not choose to have, but it is a job, nonetheless. I have more respect for a person who takes a potentially nasty position than one who sits on their ass.
If this is such a terrible profession, why do we send our children out as missionaries for sales of candy, magazines, or some other school driven profit maker. If you allow your kids to do it, an equal measure of courtesy should be afforded the adult doing what your kids do. Would you want someone to be discourteous to your children? Then espouse that ethic.
My first job was selling door to door subscriptions for the local paper. I was courteous and most folk responded with a similar candor. Some were evil-a learning experience.
Over the years, I’ve learned that everything involves sales. If I’m servicing a product, I can suggest sell something else, if that is beneficial to you. If called to service something, and you’d be better off replacing it, I need to sell the concept.
Two years of my life were spent in commercial sales. One was repping automotive diagnostic equipment to garages and dealerships in West Philly and the main line. My goal was to improve shop profitability, and shorten repair time while increasing accuracy of repair diagnosis. To you the consumer-that means a lower repair bill.
The next was back in the security industry, seeing how I could save a company money on their burglary, fire, CCTV, or access control system, or at least improve service for the same dollar spent.
I’ve cold called thousands of businesses in Southeast PA, and submit that everything you own, everything you purchase, is the result of a sales event, be it direct sales, subliminal brand identification, recommendation, or some event that planted a seed deep within your brain causing you to choose brand x.
Now that I am a constuction/remodeling company owner, I still sell. Products, service, installation-all of it is sold. When incoming work runs lean, I cold call.
Not every salesman is the archetype of Willy Loman. Men and women every day earn their living through sales, are working, and contributing, via taxes paid on their earnings, to the collective good.
'Nuff said.
