Heard this once from someone in business I respect:
‘Most careers turn into sales jobs when you get senior enough....’
edit – and how long will it take to fix this chuffing quote function]
Do it manually (quote)text blah blah blah(/quote) but put square brackets in place of these ()
It’s what the buttons ought to do, if the buttons were there. It works, it’s just a bit of a drag to keep having to do it.
Works for bold and italic, just put i or b where quote is.
Slightly differing view. I recently spent time with a very stressed installation engineering crew trying to configure a completely oversold product in a ridiculous timeline. They were working until 1-2am for the best part of a week. Salesmen were nowhere.
Theres arseholes everywhere in life jonnyboi...
I am kind of a salesman- I work in student recruitment so it's partly our job to get kids into university in general, and partly our job to get kids into my university in particular. Love it tbh. I used to work in a bank branch for a while and a big part of that job, was pressure selling insurance and lending. And I just didn't do it really. (and that shitty culture led to massive loss of customers, mis-selling, fines and court cases...) So like anything it can be good or bad. Even if I could retire tomorrow and spend the rest of my life riding bikes and being an interweb ****, I'd really miss the face-to-face stuff.
I occasionally get a call from Abtar, who works for our computer supplies supplier, he just phones up, says "everything alright? need anything?" and we say "Well, we've got this online order thing so we just order what we need without speaking to you, and our procurement people won't let us use anyone else". And he goes, "oh", so we generally end up trying to cheer him up. Poor Abtar
@kryton True, although sales and marketing appears to be a particularly effective arsehole magnet....
Sales is one of the hardest jobs in the world, depending on what’s sales you are in, what’s being sold and when you are in it. I’ve worked with order takers, marketeers, account managers, bid/proposal writers, zero salary “kill to eat” types and phone sales, and there is always one who is naturally more proficient at it - but still find it hard, as ultimately, predominantly you are selling stuff to someone or something that doesn’t want to buy it or can’t afford it. Redundancy and compromise agreements are commonplace, building rapport is tough, speaking to decision makers likewise you need to have a thick skin, but you’ll not do well if you have a thick head
Ive been a client manager for years now. I juggle the client and the business and try to maintain or generate more revenue. Some would say that bit of it is sales, it’s not, it’s good customer management.
I wouldn't want to be on the sales/new business side where I work - it looks a lot of pressure and a lot is beyond your control.
Several years ago though we had a different structure etc. and the sales guys were a bit of a joke, earning more than they should with commission based on revenue and more often than not the sales guy would give a price to the customer without consulting with the technical teams on the solution. That ended up with a fair few projects we either made no margin on or lost money - yet the sales guy who'd done the deal still got paid his bonus. Thankfully that's in the distant past now.
Actually as I grow older I'm beginning to think that buyers are more valuable than sales people because if they buy the wrong materials or equipment the sales people won't be able to sell the product anyway.
Globalti
I agree in part. The procurement side has become very aware of costs theses days. For example not just give you your best price, but are aware of manufacturing practices, material costs and manufacturing costs. It’s becoming more common place for the procurement team to know more about what they are buying about the sellers business than the seller knows about the business they are selling into.
I read an article sometime ago where some businesses are reducing there head count on the road, and concentrating on using internal staff for account management, and solution based selling or specification. Makes sense suppose in some business sectors, that said the World is a small place now with the aide of technology (conference calls, emails etc). I work in sales (Global reach product) and can support my side of things has changed from the visit to desk specification / tendering, conference calls etc etc
Tough game no matter where one is in the sales pipeline. I couldn’t do pure full on sales. Specification and solution based is where it’s at for me.
Appreciate there are many facets to the sales function the above is just broad strokes.
Strikes me as a shit job so therefore pay compensates, having said that you generally earn very little for cleaning toilets.
Actually as I grow older I’m beginning to think that buyers are more valuable than sales people because if they buy the wrong materials or equipment the sales people won’t be able to sell the product anyway.
As someone who has worked in procurement and still manages a procurement function (among other things), I would say that you can't have one without the other.
I've previously built a procurement to sales supply chain so that everyone in between (product, pricing, commercial) understands each other's roles - it makes everyone's lives easier, particularly when it comes to cost accountability: take cost out and the sales guys have more margin to play with to land the new/repeat business.
Lots of respect for the sales guys - esp BD/new business - as without them the business doesn't grow and without growth there isn't a viable business.
As was said up there: everyone's in sales.
Our sales guys used to get paid on revenue, now they get paid on margin made, for reasons eluded to above...