The Serious Part
Selling - The Key Issues
There are many issues that warrant debate and action surrounding Professional Sales People. From why doesn't selling appear in any school career guides or lessons, to why sales people are taxed on their cars even if they NEVER use them privately. If you want your say and believe we would benefit from some representation on some of the heavier weight issues, this is the section for you.
Some food for thought …
In the sixties and seventies the roads were full of sales people, some in bowler hats, visiting every retail outlet, manufacturing facility, and place of business in the UK. ‘Sales representatives’ were required to sell everything from paperclips to bricks, to heavyweight machinery and back to buckets bowls and the full variety of foodstuffs. Not to mention photocopiers, plant hire equipment, kids toys and fuel ~ there were lots of us …
At this time there was a huge infrastructure involved in servicing the sales person on the road, armies of managers, customer service operators, fleet administrators, manufacturing facilities and so on.
With all these sales people on the road it was no wonder that a good career pursuit was to climb the slippery pole of the ‘man manager’.
Through the late seventies and early eighties the specter of centralized buying and distribution loomed large, smaller businesses started to disappear as the majors across all industries recognized the power of consolidation. Hundreds of thousands of sales people became redundant, so too did the management structures and support networks around them.
The ‘bright’ guys at this time saw account management as the way forward. Leaving the reducing field teams to fend for themselves the ‘new breed’ forged ahead in building relationships with growing retailers, feeding the hunger for ever reducing prices and ‘competitive edge’ retailing became an ever more researched science. ‘’DPP’ [Direct Product Profit] and category management introduced sophisticated business modeling and new ways of perceiving ‘profit’. From mark up to mark down, from ‘POR ex VAT’ to EBITDA sales people had to grow in their acumen from understanding the supply chain to constructing complex financial proposals.
Meanwhile ‘the dark side’ was giving sales professionals a bad name. The media picked up on certain ‘door to door’ operators selling inferior goods and dodgy finance deals, “would you buy a used car from this man” …
In career lessons it became credible to pursue a career in marketing, sapping a lot of young talent from the sales industry. Is it by coincidence then that as the sales profession ‘made its own way’, much British manufacturing fell by the wayside as we failed in our attempts to sell effectively to international markets.
Today selling is more sophisticated than it has ever been and very often better paid than many of the more traditional professions. Senior account managers, people mangers and executives often find themselves comparing their packages favorably to accountants, lawyers and doctors.
So …
- Why don’t kids learn about sales in career lessons?
- Why is the salesperson penalized;-
- Company car tax (an airline pilot doesn’t get taxed on free flights, a hairdresser doesn’t get taxed on free haircuts … )
- Speeding, why is the points system not linked to the amount of miles you drive
- Employment law, is not clear in respect of, for example job share after returning from maternity leave.
- Education, where are the courses designed to prepare you for a career in sales.
- Where is the media profile when salespeople are made redundant?