Sales Myths And Folklore

Research has shown that some of the preconceptions about sales folk are in fact untrue.  Apparently salespeople are not 'only interested in deals', 'only motivated by money', 'lazy', or 'mercenary'.  What has emerged from the surveys is that salespeople are 'influential', 'hardworking', and 'passionate about their contribution to the business'.

On the other hand some of the generalisations that salespeople themselves like to believe, have been shown to be well founded.  For example, over 70% of salespeople are men, who are likely to be paid more and probably have a more senior position than their female counterparts.  Unsurprisingly there is a variation in the figures from industry to industry and from one region to another.

Over 50% of salespeople never planned a career in sales and barely 20% of salesladies look on sales as a lifetime career, compared to almost half of the salesmen.  However, the ladies felt far more positive about the way their careers had progressed in recent years, compared to the men.

Salespeople are proud to be in sales, and 95% enjoy working in the profession.  Of the 5% who say they don't, a large number are in IT and Telecommunications where earnings are generally highest.  The sector with the highest 'enjoyment factor' is Business to Business with 98%.

Salespeople tend to judge their own work primarily by performance against targets, but this maybe because that is what others measure them by.  With advances in technology being applied to the sales process, face-to-face selling is still reckoned to be the most effective way to secure business.  Perhaps surprisingly, sales divisions were reckoned to have the most influence in over 60% of companies, with accounts/finance at 20% and marketing at 11%.  But then the researchers were surveying sales people!

Unfortunately almost two-thirds of sales people do not feel well-managed, with 'laissez-faire' and 'distant' criticisms coming to the fore, rather than 'aggressive' or 'dictatorial'.  Almost as many claimed they could fulfil their line manager's role more effectively than the incumbent.  Amongst the managers of this group specifically, 'aggressive' and 'dictatorial' did dominate.

For the sales managers, long hours, long weeks, short holidays, working whilst on holiday, and taking insufficient exercise all loomed large.  These managers stated that their biggest motivator was winning the respect of their teams.

At a higher level, the sales directors still work long hours but not long weeks.  Far more than the managers, the directors were applying their own skills to their CVs and other career related activities.  Somewhat bizarrely, the directors and the non-managerial salespeople do seem to take plenty of exercise.  Looking at other aspects of lifestyle, most salespeople eat healthy lunches, with less than 10% resorting to burgers, chips and pies.  One in eight claimed never to eat lunch.

Rather worryingly, one third of salespeople had received no sales training at all in the previous twelve months, and only 10% had received more than 5 days.  Amazingly not even half had taken it upon themselves to read a self-development book, and a quarter said they would not be interested in a free newsletter dedicated to sales improvement*.  Once again it was in the Business to Business sector where the greatest proportion reckoned they actually had received adequate training.

The researchers concluded that:

• Sales is getting tougher
• Salespeople's needs are more complex than just money
• Salespeople are hardworking
• Sales needs more women
• Salespeople enjoy their work and are proud of what they do
• New talent needs to be better nurtured and developed
• Salespeople want to improve their sales skills

*There's lots more advice like this in my regular bulletin.
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