THE WORLD'S NUMBER ONE JOB

What principal money- earning activity in life ranks number one among all others?
The entire auditorium was briefly hushed as participants at the seminar pensively thought through this question I had posed. Eventually answers started coming in fast. Not surprisingly these responses included medicine, engineering, teaching, farming, banking, and so many other such esteemed vocations. This situation generated an intense debate among individuals as they tried to defend their occupations with all the vehemence they could provide. Eventually I got into the fray and indicated that all the answers were not accurate, as they had all left out the World’s Number One Job-Sales.
This scenario keeps repeating itself at every one of the training seminars I have been a part of. Every one of us is in the business of selling every single day of our lives. From sunrise to sunset we are engaged in negotiating, communicating, persuading, and influencing — trying to convince people to behave in ways that we believe would be beneficial to us. This is what selling is all about-an ability to get others to ‘buy’ whatever you are ‘selling’.
We all make a living, selling.
According to Philip Kotler, the world-renowned marketing guru, selling is one of the oldest professions in the world. Humankind started selling from the Garden of Eden and has been engaged in it since then. Cain applied the principles of effective negotiation to reduce his sentence from God after killing his brother (Read Genesis 4). Abigail used the principles of dealing with an unsatisfied client when she prevented the king from killing her husband, Nabal. She was so good at it that she was rewarded with marriage to the king (Read 1 Samuel 25). Jesus ability to ‘sell’ salvation to lost souls started a movement that has stood the test of time and lasted for over two thousand years.
Life is full of stories of people whose ability to sell whatever they had in mind made them successes. The great men and women of our time and times before were all great salespeople. Martin Luther, Churchill, Washington, Lincoln, Mandela, Nkrumah, Luther King Jnr., Mother Teresa, and so many others of their kind possessed an uncanny ability to win the hearts and minds of their followers to accomplish whatever they wanted them to. I would risk even adding Hitler to this least of people who used principles of sales to move the masses.
I daresay at this juncture that to be effective in life you must possess great selling skills. Sales skills are life skills. Take a look around. You will realize that all the top executives are excellent salespeople. Listen to the stories of business successes on TV programs such as M’ASEM and CHANGE MANAGERS.
Even effective parenting requires good sales skills. Effective employees, those who get promoted faster and are the toasts of their organisations, use sales techniques to get their coworkers and bosses to go along with them and to cooperate with them in getting the job done. To be a success in virtually any area of life that involves other people requires you to develop and use excellent selling skills.
It is however unfortunate, that over the years, a shroud of negativity has been placed over such a profession. Stereotypes abound about sales people. Salespeople were, or are still, seen as people who could not manage to achieve their goals in life and therefore resorted to sales as a last resort. They are seen as sub-educated individuals with no chance of climbing up the corporate ladder. Salespeople are also seen as con men (and women) traveling around looking for an unsuspecting or unwilling buyer to force their sub-standard wares on.
Even people who are involved in sales as an occupation are embarrassed to be associated with selling. Apart from being referred to simply as salespeople, those whose livelihoods are based solely on selling prefer to go by names such as sales representatives, account executives, account managers, customer relations managers, sales consultants, sales engineers, field representatives, agents, district managers and marketing representative, just to mention a few.
The place of selling in academia is restricted to just a small mention in Marketing with almost no training institution dedicated to the teaching of selling as a course. This holds despite the fact that salespeople are the movers and shakers in every business and industry. They are the critical link between a company and its customers. At a point, salespeople are public relations experts, representing customers to their organisations and in return representing their organisation to customers. Sales people are key to the creation of demand for all the products and services that keep everyone employed at every other occupation. If no sale of the product or service is made, there is no profit or growth and eventually a collapse of the organization might occur. Sales-related jobs account for a huge chunk of day-to-day business activity. An agrarian-led economy like ours relies on sales to get farm produce to consumers, whilst service-led economies also rely on sales to generate profits. This shows the importance of not only salespeople but the discipline of selling.
Modern managers have recognised the value of selling and therefore are employing salespeople who are well-educated and well-trained professionals. Financial institutions, both banking and non-banking, are looking for well-educated individuals to employ into areas of sales, marketing and customer care. A glance through the dailies would reveal an increase in the demand for sales professional in all other sectors. Professionals who would not only sell but also engage in building and maintaining long-term relationships with customers.
The modern sales person is an ‘executive’, who is abreast with modern means and technologies used in listening to customers, assessing their needs and organising their company’s products or services to meet the needs of the customer. Such individuals represent the new face of selling. These modern managers are also excellent salespeople in their own right.
I recently visited the showroom of a well-known office furniture outlet around the Central Business District of Accra with a friend. I was warmly received by an elderly gentleman, who gave me an excursion of my life through the showroom. This man was exceptional as a salesperson and I was truly impressed. However my admiration for this man quadrupled after I found that he was the manager at the place. I would definitely be going back there any time I need some thing. Managing Directors of banks are now engaged in winning very profitable customers. Such is the importance of selling skills to everyone in any organisation from the Chief Executive to the cleaner (or sanitation officer).
As companies strive towards attaining greater market share and as competition increases, the need for a more market focused and customer oriented sales culture becomes more imperative. This is new culture is attainable as great selling skills, like other life skills, are learnable. Through continuous learning and practice excellent salespeople can be developed in every organisation resulting in better product and service quality in all organisations. Any one can become better and more persuasive at sales. And the more effective one becomes at selling, the more successful the one will eventually be in every area of life.

The crucial question with regard to selling is not if you are doing it, but if you are good at it. So says the international sales coach Brian Tracy. This is so true because in this life we all make a living, selling.

The writer is the CEO/Principal Sales Consultant of Exsellers International, LLC, an avant-garde sales training and consulting firm involved in turning around and improving the sales functions of its clients through cutting-edge training seminars, recruitment and placement of highly trained sales executives, and provision of state-of-the-art sales-boosting products and services.