Read an Excerpt
Selling with Soul
Achieving Career Success without Sacrificing Personal and Spiritual Growth
By Sharon V. Parker
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Sharon V. Parker
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4697-5328-7
Chapter One
What Is Sales?
Selling at its simplest is solving problems. None of us buy products. We buy a solution to a problem we can't solve ourselves. If someone tried to sell me a green plastic tube, I'd laugh. But once it became clear that the tube could deliver water from the faucet to my rose garden, I would give him my full attention. The seller who understands the customer's problem, who honestly educates the customer as to why his or her product or service will solve it, and who stands behind that solution with after-sale involvement is a sales professional. In fact, if after careful consideration, such a seller believes his product or service will not solve the problem, he says so. He may even refer the customer to another supplier who can help.
Selling is described as a series of steps, from prospecting to closing, that lead to success measured in income. What gets left out of that description are the pressures put on salespeople every day. We are pressured to push the product of the month even if it may not be best for the job, to promote a product even though it still has major "bugs," to downplay or not mention problems with deliveries, to jack up the price so we can appear to give a deep discount, to create artificial "deadlines" or fire sales to goad a customer into making a decision. The atmosphere that surrounds sales takes a toll on the salesperson. Tension headaches, ulcers, sleepless nights, burnout, and conflicts at home are the too common results. Sales managers who greet each sales success with "But what have you done for me lately?" add to the needless pressure.
This book takes aim at the stereotypes and the toxic atmosphere that surround the sales professional. We will look at the basic steps from a broader perspective intended to help salespeople find joy in what they do and balance in their lives. Instead of just offering techniques, we will look at the attitudes that transform the steps and allow us to sell with soul. Selling benefits more than the seller and the buyer. Selling creates jobs. It is a primary business driver, adding value to our economy. When sales plummet, companies cut back. When sales exceed forecasts, companies expand. Selling is the lifeblood of business.
Product design can't create jobs. It won't take you long to think of several examples of brilliant products that failed commercially, even products that were technically superior to their competition. TiVO, for example, offered state-of-the-art technology that replaced the cable box and allowed television viewers to record four channels at once, rewind live TV, skip commercials, and more, yet the cable providers continue to expand their leases of functionally-limited boxes and DVRs. In 1972, DuPont researchers invented Kevlar, a material as lightweight and strong as iron, and considered it the most important new fiber since nylon. Expecting to reap the profits from a billion-dollar market, they watched in disappointment for more than a decade as the market failed to grow beyond the need for bulletproof vests and sports equipment. They needed salespeople to find problems Kevlar could solve. Today, Kevlar is in the body of the Motorola Droid, cookware, audio systems, brake linings, drumheads, and woodwind reeds, all as a result of creative sales and marketing.
Promotion and advertising won't create jobs. When Apple launched the MacIntosh, it bought the most expensive advertising available. Its innovative ad titled "1984" showed unthinking drones following Big Brother, or "Big Blue," but it failed to stop the rising tide of less-efficient IBM clones from dominating the market. The resulting job losses at Apple extended all the way up to the founder of the company, the late Steve Jobs, who resigned in 1985 from the company he created.
Dropping your price won't create jobs—it may even cause buyers to question a product's value based on the "you get what you pay for" axiom. And "place," how you get your product to market, is not the answer. Your successes will be quickly imitated, and you will soon find yourself sharing shelf space or distributors with your competitors.
Many brilliant people have failed to appreciate the value of selling. Even a former industry icon like the late Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation and former Fortune magazine "Man of the Century," was reputed to consider salespeople unnecessary. Folklore has it he maintained throughout his reign that a really good catalog would do more for company growth than the best sales staff.
Today's "visionaries" argue that a great website and electronic commerce will replace salespeople as the best way to match goods and services with buyers. And yet, an entire industry exists just to provide training seminars and skills improvement classes to salespeople. Marketing expert Philip Kotler, in his perennially popular textbook Marketing Management, sums it up best by pointing out that "Today's companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to train their salespeople in the art of salesmanship. Over a million copies of books, cassettes, and videotapes on selling are purchased annually." Why? Because at the end of the day, "People buy from people."
As sales veterans know, the tangible benefits of a career in sales include above-average income, flexibility and autonomy, and potential for rapid advancement. Salespeople rank high on annual salary surveys. In 2011, Salary.com reported average earnings of $78,218 for account sales reps, $64,900 for starting sales reps, and $122,700 for top sales executives. Compare that with the starting salary for most engineers of $66,124, and sales looks very profitable—especially since no formal schooling beyond a four-year degree or equivalent industry experience is required. Sales managers, according to similar "what you're worth" surveys, can earn $100,000 to $165,000 depending on industry.
Salespeople often cite their relative autonomy, their ability to set their own hours, establish their own priorities, and remain flexible in the face of family demands, as benefits of their career. At a time when national surveys validate a growing desire among professionals to work fewer and more flexible hours, this fact, especially when combined with high earnings potential, would seem to make sales a highly desirable career. As a single parent, I valued being able to chaperone a field trip or attend a midday school program for my daughter. My schedule was mine to manage, and my sales manager was only concerned with my results.
But despite the benefits to the individual and to the economy, few college graduates aspire to be salespeople. Corporations lament that it is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain sales professionals. As reported on www.cnbc.com, "As companies shift their focus to growth mode, they need more people out on the front lines driving revenue growth and that means they need to boost their sales teams. A whopping 27 percent of hiring managers said they plan to hire for sales positions in 2011, according to the CareerBuilder survey."
Companies are in desperate need of salespeople who, as Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, describes it, "solve problems for an elite group of clients, using a mix of financial management and communication acumen." As 76.4 million retiring baby boomers are replaced, WhatsNextinYourLife.com predicts US businesses will experience a ten-million-person shortfall in filling sales positions. Why are sales professionals in such short supply?
The main barrier may be no more complicated than lingering stereotypes about salespeople and sales jobs. Many people think salespeople need a "killer instinct," with the competitive drive of a thoroughbred and the temperament of a pit bull. Sales is a war game, right? Sales managers and trainers are guilty of borrowing lingo from the military or competitive sports. The resulting slogans are adversarial, allowing for only one winner and demanding a loser. Slogans like Vince Lombardi's "Winning isn't everything—it's the only thing" remain popular, while ancient wisdom like "Caveat emptor" implies all salespeople should be required to wear a human version of the "Beware of Dog" sign.
Such attitudes, if they ever were helpful, are obsolete today. Selling is not adversarial. It is not war or sport. It is not all about the money, manipulation, or creation of false need. In fact, the seller operating from this paradigm will fail over the long term. Whether you measure sales success by income, recognition, or job satisfaction, it can only be achieved by working with your customers for mutual benefit. That is selling. Selling with soul goes beyond that to add the following elements, each of which will be discussed in later chapters. The elements of selling with soul include:
• Enjoying a balanced life where work and personal behavior are congruent
• Recognizing the importance of empathy
• Respecting yourself and your customer
• Practicing persistence and patience
• Listening to yourself and others with sensitivity
• Avoiding rationalization
• Embracing change
• Being a lifelong learner
• Achieving philosophical alignment
From preparation to prospecting to the ongoing maintenance and preservation of relationships built on trust and respect, selling with soul differentiates us and allows us to feel joy in what we do.
REFLECTIONS ON CHAPTER 1 What Is Sales?
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. —George Eliot
The questions that follow are intended to begin a process of self- examination leading to rethinking sales. In this book, we will review each step in sales basics; but more importantly, we will reexamine those steps from the viewpoint of selling with soul and the qualities it requires, beginning with self-awareness. Each chapter will conclude with an opportunity for thoughtful reflection. Take a few minutes to jot down your thoughts and answers to the questions.
1. Why did you first go into sales? Who or what influenced you at the time you made that decision?
2. How do you regard your work today? Are you proud to announce when meeting new people that you sell for a living? If not, what is it you feel when asked about your job? Are you afraid of being stereotyped?
3. What do you most admire in salespeople you have worked with?
4. What do you most dislike in salespeople you have worked with?
5. Which of these characteristics do you see in yourself?
Note to Self: I practice my profession with pride and a willingness to constantly improve.
Chapter Two
A Day In The Life
You wake up only when the alarm buzzes. You roll over and hit the snooze button. Again. And again. It's Monday and time to go to work. You pull the sheets up to your chin and flip through the pages of your day planner in your mind, trying to find an appointment worth getting up for. There is that presentation at one o'clock, you remind yourself. You drag yourself out of bed, pull on your "uniform" of a business suit or today's "business casual," and kiss your partner and kids good-bye. Tucking your cell phone in your pocket, you head for the nearest espresso stand and pound a double-shot. You tell yourself this morning, as you do most mornings, that there's got to be a better way to live. There is.
It is common in today's culture to feel like jugglers, trying desperately to keep the plates spinning rather than crashing to the ground in pieces around us. Each plate represents a compartment in our fragmented lives, separated by numbers on our "to-do lists." We carry with us a constant feeling of having left something important undone. Our sleep is disrupted by anxiety over tomorrow's tasks or by recurring dreams about having missed the big test or having forgotten to pick up the kids from school. Stress and its many side effects have become a national epidemic, with WebMD (www.webmd.com/balance) reporting that 43 percent of all adults suffer from stress-related health issues and that 75 to 90 percent of all doctors' office visits are a result of stress-related effects on our health, such as headaches, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, skin conditions, asthma, arthritis, depression, and anxiety. And it's not just a health issue but a financial one as well. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that stress costs American industry more than $300 billion annually.
We live in a culture that emphasizes the tangible and the material as the only means of keeping score. We have come to accept that work is the opposite of satisfying, the antithesis of our "real life." We know the words of the Chinese sage who recommended you find work you love and you'll never work a day in your life, but we shake our heads and wonder if he would have felt the same in the United States in 2011. We promise ourselves we'll do what we love when the kids are through school or when we retire. Even one of today's most successful capitalists and financiers, however, reminds us of an immutable truth. Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., advised graduates to work for an organization they admired and not to be one of the people who do jobs they don't like, telling themselves that it's just temporary. He said, "I always worry about people who say, 'I'm going to do this for ten years; I really don't like it very well. And then I'll do this ...' That's a little like saving up sex for your old age. Not a very good idea."
We hunger for a culture change and a life in which our whole selves have value, but changing a culture is difficult at best. Books on organizational behavior affirm that values are the most difficult to change, while behavior and habits may offer some opportunities for incremental growth. We must identify values and then provide ways to incorporate them into behavior.
When the Behavior Matches Values
One of my early sales role models was a man named Bob. Bob worked hard at his sales job. He had earned the highest ranking in our sales force, executive sales engineer, and consistently was top performer in the branch. Bob woke early each day, went to the gym, and exercised. Now, that might have been enough right there for me to resent him. After all, I've spent a lifetime trying to acquire that discipline and still only manage it sporadically. But it gets worse, or better, depending on your perspective.
Every morning before he began work, Bob took a few minutes to reflect, pray, or meditate. He aligned himself and his energies with his Higher Power and asked for guidance. Then, between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., he was either doing follow-up letters and reports, working with a customer to solve a problem, or making phone calls and visits to potential new customers. Unlike many of us who met at lunch and complained about the customers of the morning, Bob used his lunchtime to get to know a customer better, never talking business during that time but instead learning more about the customers' families and interests outside of work. He had a rich family life and many interests of his own, and he delighted in sharing those and finding common ground with his customers.
By 6:00 p.m., Bob was home, where he and his wife took turns cooking. The kids worked on their homework or helped with meal preparation and household chores. At 7:00 p.m., they all sat down together for a meal. No one wore headphones to the table. No one grabbed food and ran out the door with it. This was a time when Bob and his wife would ask the kids about their day and share some highlights from their own. If the kids didn't want to talk, that was okay, but they knew they could count on the opportunity to do so and that their parents were willing to listen. Bob and his wife rarely told their children what to do, and I don't recall them ever stepping in and taking on one of their children's conflicts as their own. What they did instead was to be generous with their time, ask probing questions, and help their kids figure out what their choices were, as well as the likely consequences of each choice. They talked about their own values and beliefs, but never demanded their kids set the same priorities, believing that each child had to develop his or her own core of values and own spiritual foundation because no one can do that for another.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Selling with Soul by Sharon V. Parker Copyright © 2012 by Sharon V. Parker. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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