One of the biggest mistakes any company makes is not educating everyone in their organization that they are “ALL” involved in SALES. Nothing happens without sales being made … nothing! Great customer service helps bring customers back … but so many people in companies feel that because they may not have any direct contact with a customer, client, patron, consumer, (whatever it is you want to call them) then they have nothing to do with sales.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The end result for any organization must be a happy customer and it takes all departments, all personnel doing their job properly, to make that happen. So, since we are all involved in sales, I thought it appropriate to set the tone and start off with how important salespeople are to every organization.

So many times, I am brought into organizations to talk about sales, and I see/feel that some of their salespeople really don’t want to be called or considered salespeople. Management even goes out of their way to figure out a different title for them such as …

Account Executive, Account Manager, Advisor,
Business Counselor, Business Development Manager,
Consultant, Customer Representative, Customer Specialist,
Marketing Engineer, Marketing Manager,
Relationship Manager, Solutions Analyst,
Technical Sales Advisor

It is as if they aren’t proud of being in sales or being considered a salesperson. For you folks out there who aren’t proud of being in sales, or, for those of you who might look at salespeople in a different light as compared to how you would value some other business executive … I want to share a little piece I found years ago that sums up the true value salespeople bring to any company. The author is unknown, but whoever wrote it … got it right! I’ve taken the liberty of tweaking the original article to make it a little more current.

I am proud to be a salesperson because more than any other person I, and millions of others like me, built America. The people who build a better mousetrap - or better anything - would starve to death if they waited for customers to beat a pathway to their door. Regardless of how good, or how needed the product or service might be, it has to be sold. Eli Whitney was laughed at when he showed his cotton gin. Edison had to install his electric light free of charge in an office building before anyone would even look at it. The first sewing machine was smashed to pieces by a Boston mob. People scoffed at the idea of railroads. They thought that even traveling thirty miles an hour would stop the circulation of the blood! Morse had to plead before ten Congresses before they would even look at his telegraph.

The public didn’t go around demanding these things; they had to be sold! They needed thousands of salespeople, trailblazers, pioneers, people who could persuade with the same effectiveness as the inventor could invent. Salespeople took these inventions, sold the public on what these products could do, taught customers how to use them, and then taught businesspeople how to make a profit from them. As a salesperson I’ve done more to make America what it is today than any other person you know. I was as vital in your great-great-grandparents’ day as I am in yours, and I’ll be just as vital in your great-great-grandchildren’s day. I have educated more people; created more jobs; taken the drudgery from the laborer’s work; given more profits to businesspeople; and have given more people a fuller and richer life than anyone in history.

I’ve dragged prices down, pushed quality up, and made it possible for you to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of automobiles, radios, electric refrigerators, televisions, and air-conditioned homes and buildings. I’ve made it possible for inventors to invent, for factories to hum, and for ships to sail the seven seas. How much money you find in your pay envelope next week and the future success of products yet to be invented will depend on me. Without me the wheels of industry would come to a grinding halt. I AM A SALESPERSON, and both proud and grateful that as such I serve my family, my fellow man, and my country.

I hope this makes you all look at salespeople in a more positive, appreciative way, because they deserve it. Remember what I said at the start - Nothing happens without sales being made … ABSOLUTLEY nothing!