Miller's Sales Blog Applying Character in Sales

Sales and Marketing - a Response to Mikael Gueck's Comments

Mikael Gueck’s comment brought up a couple of great questions.

Is selling in general a bad thing? There is a common mistrust of sales people, because we are coin-operated. This mistrust is especially true when one of the words “sales” or “marketing” is on the business card. One of my favorite movie lines comes from “The Princess Bride” when Wesley tells the princess, “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” The clear inference is that selling does not correspond to the way things really are.

Another way of looking at selling is that all of us who have jobs of some form are in fact selling something. When we have a salaried position, we are selling our hours to the company that in turn is selling a product or service to its customers. If we are compensated via some form of commission plan, we are selling our company’s product or services.

Selling your hours has its upside and downside. On the upside, your pay is predictable and “safe”. You don’t have to worry about what your paycheck will look like next pay period. You can put together a consistent family budget. Life as it relates to your earnings is predictable. This does not feel like selling, but it is. One of the differences between selling your hours and selling a product is the “selling your hours” sale took place during the interview and hiring process. You were selling your value to the company and trying to build up your own value as much as possible in order to get the highest return per hour for your hours. Asking for the job is what we call “closing” the deal in the sales world. Then once you land the job (close the deal) you relax (no more selling!) and start delivering.

Downside? You only have a limited number of hours you can sell during the week, and what you earn for those hours is also limited. You are setting physical limits on your earnings potential straight out of the gate.

Selling products or services for a company with a commission-based compensation plan pays based on performance that is variable. Compensation plans are very different depending on the company and the product, but in general there are also downsides and upsides.

Downside – with a commission-based comp plan, your earnings are not predictable from month to month. Sometimes it is feast, and sometimes it is famine. There is more risk and uncertainty. Risk and uncertainty increase stress. Your compensation is dependent on decisions others are making which you may be able to influence but not control. This is the daily stress you live with, and it is not for everyone.

The upside is that the compensation can be much greater (depending on the compensation plan) for overachievement of sales targets or goals. For example, if I get paid at an hourly rate, I can only sell one of my hours at a time, but if I get paid for selling a product, then I can sell multiple products at a time. In principle then, my compensation is unlimited. In reality, most compensation plans have some form of caps.

So my conclusion to the question of whether selling is a bad thing is no. We all sell. Selling in principle is not bad. How some people sell though can be very bad, and that goes for hourly (salaried) employees as well as commission-based employees.

The second question that comes to mind from Mikael’s post is the essence of this blog. How can we sell products and services in a good way – with strong moral character? I dealt with this question early on in my professional sales career. I read a lot, and one of the books I read is the Bible. In his letter to the Colossians, Paul tells the people, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than men…”

See: www.biblegateway.com; Colossians 3:23

When I read this, I asked myself how this verse would apply to my life since I was in sales. It seems simple to apply it in the context of being an hourly or salaried worker. Then I thought in the context of sales, what if one of my accounts was Heaven??? How would I try to effectively sell to Heaven? Couldn’t Saint Peter go to God and ask Him if we were offering them a good deal? How would you feel if you knew your customer knows everything you know about your product and the deal you were structuring for them? Some of the thoughts that came to mind were: integrity would be a given; there would be nothing but honesty and transparency in dealing with Heaven (you don’t want to piss off Saint Peter or try to deceive him); I would need to be very careful to set the right expectations; I would want to make sure I’m selling Heaven good products that perform up to the specifications we advertise; I would take their success personal; I would react well when they have a crisis; NO gouging – Heaven gets a fair price commensurate with the value of the products or services; etc…

I believe this is the passage that really started me thinking about the concept of high character in a sales profession. I decided if I could not apply this passage to what I do professionally, I would need to change careers. And here I am.

So can you be a good guy or gal in a sales profession? Yes you can. Selling in itself is not a bad thing. Stop wherever you are and look around you. Everything you see with the exception of the blue sky and natural growing plants and dirt and your skin is the result of a product or service someone designed, manufactured, marketed, and sold. You can be good in the moral sense and very successful in the “how-much-did-you-sell” sense.

Posted at 12:44PM Jul 14, 2007 by George Miller in Personal  |  Comments[2]