Date:29/04/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/catalyst/2004/04/29/stories/2004042900280400.htm

Back Say it with pride: I am a salesman!

Harish Bijoor

The author's new column on sales starts off by exhorting salespeople to take pride in their job.

A salesperson should not work in isolation

EVERY man, woman and child I have met in the world of selling has always told me that `he' or a `she' is a marketing person. No salesman I have met in my twenty years in the rough and tumble of the Indian marketplace has ever told me he is a salesman! Or a saleswoman for that matter! Few as they are!

Every salesperson is a bit too shy to call himself a salesperson. Being a salesman is not a very proud thing to be. It's not like being a doctor. Not like being a pilot!

There are and have been just too many salesman jokes going around for nearly a hundred years. Starting in the mother of them all sales markets, the United States of America, the salesman is quite an odd character to boot. He is the kind of guy who does weird things in his lifetime!

For one, he is constantly travelling. Twenty-five days a month, if you will! He is the guy you will meet in motels on the highway. He is the guy who you will find sitting at the bar, recounting his selling tales into the wee hours of the night. Eighty per cent fiction and twenty per cent fact!

The salesperson is distinguished by a tongue that is extra active as well! And this is a trait that is oft made fun of. Meet a guy at a party who talks a bit too much, and he must be a guy from sales! The glib-tongued guy has to be a salesman!

The sales guy is into a lot of hyperbole as a matter of habit. Whatever he sells is the best thing in the world and whatever he buys is the best thing in the world as well! He is a bit of a superman really! At least in his own world view!

The salesperson is a pretty insular creature as well. He operates from a solitary hill of his own creation. He sits atop this hill and believes himself to be the best! It is this pompous view of himself that gets him to get what he wants, when he wants!

The salesperson is not too respected when it comes to awarding credibility scores as well. While a teacher might get a score of ninety on hundred, and a doctor of yore a seventy, the salesman is quite likely to remain somewhere in the twenties or the early thirties.

The salesman is all about selling. "Sell at any cost" seemed the mantra the early ancestors of the salesman in the US grew up with. The honest statement of intent and the ethics of the selling process seemed to somehow do a tightrope walk of sorts all the while.

Net of it, the salesman wasn't too positive a character to be. The tag came with baggage. Negative baggage that had society sniggering.

Focus India! The salesman will always tell you he is in marketing. Marketing is benign! Certainly more benign than sales. Marketing is stylish. Marketing is intellectual stuff. Salespeople in India are just not proud to be salespersons. A tragedy, really!

An insurance salesperson is called an Insurance Advisor! Every industry has its own euphemisms to describe the salesman who peddles the product or service. In order to attract the best of talent to selling, semantics of the designations sales organisations award their sales force seem critical.

There are two issues here then. Selling is unattractive in modern Indian society. It is not a proud thing to do. Being a salesman is not a proud thing to be. You are a salesman because you have to be a salesman. You are a salesperson because you couldn't be anything else as well! A strong comment to make, but a real comment as well in a large number of cases in our commercial lives!

Selling is possibly the most critical element of the marketing process. It is in nine times out of ten, the real cutting edge that leads to marketing success! Selling is the life-blood of organisation that gets in critical revenue! If cash in marketing is to be equated to blood in the human body, the salesperson is the one who keeps this in constant flow! A critical guy really!

Despite it all, the salesperson in modern society finds himself caught on the back foot. Why?

Must he not get out there, stand proud, and shriek from the rooftops, "I am a salesman!" I believe he must. It is time to bring in credibility, respect and pride into the job of selling altogether! Time to explore the issues at hand and iron out the creases of disrespect from this mother of them all professions!

Be proud to be a salesman! This column will aim to do just that!

(The author is a business strategy consultant and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. He invites questions on knotty sales and distribution issues.)