As a sales trainer and a 25 year commission only salesperson, I tend to notice stories about the DEATH OF SALES. And let’s be honest the stories are everywhere, whether you read Entrepreneur.com, Inc magazine, Hubspot or any of the other 1,200,000 results on Google when you search for “Sales is Dead”. Bad news all of the articles are correct, sales is dead. Good news, the articles are all wrong, the state of our profession has never been stronger.
My first sales job was selling Kirby Vacuum cleaners door to door. The skills I learned and developed during that summer had been used by Kirby salesmen for 40 years before I learned them. More importantly, those same skills were used Electrolux and Rainbow vacuum salespeople every day to sell vacuums to people in their homes. Even today 30 years later there are guys out working to sell vacuums in people’s homes using what is essentially the same presentation skills and probably most of the same closing process. If there was ever an industry that has been declared dead repeatedly, I can pretty much guarantee that in-home vacuum sales would be it. But they are still hustling and there is a good respectable living to made selling vacuums in homes all over America.
If the salesmen and saleswomen are still hustling to sell vacuums in homes, what has changed? Almost everything, how they prospect has changed, how they use the internet to market effectively has changed, how they use inside sales teams to set appointments has changed. And how they figure out why their prospects will buy has changed.
So let me tell you what is true, mediocre is dead. If you cold call and you are mediocre, you will fail. If you social sell and you are mediocre, you will fail. If you do webinars, podcasts, blog posts or videos and you are mediocre, you will fail. If you are not getting intentionally better at selling every day, you will fail. Because sales as you did it yesterday is dead. But as long as there are products and services, there will be sales people.
Sales as a profession is constantly evolving, in fact like most jobs you can get coming fresh out of school, a sales gig is different today than it was 25 years ago. The skills, abilities, aptitude and training required to be successful in sales are constantly evolving.
Our clients have better conversations, land better clients and have stronger businesses because they know that the key to growing today is intentional improvement. If you are ready to improve your sales team and their results, we should talk. Contact Matt Nettleton, Sandler Training DTB 317-678-8800 or matt.nettleton@sandler.com
