Well, I recently got discharged from my sales job. Or “gig” as I prefer to call it. I’ve been working about 3 and 1/2 years at this current gig. Prior to that I worked 5 years in sales, so in total, I have about 8 and 1/2 years sales experience.

I should clarify it a bit. My experience is “phone sales” and the majority of what I did was set appointments. At my last job, that’s all I did was set appointments.

Sales jobs are usually compartmentalized between openers and closers. The person on the phone opens the sale, and the person that goes out to the house, spends about an hour doing a song and dance and collecting a signature – closes the sale. A sale is “a process.” It takes time, patience, and effort to get a customer to sign on the dotted line.

Let’s not confuse “sales” with flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s. Yes, the burger flippers are selling burgers, but the sale is different. There are factors to consider. For example, whether or not the product qualifies as supply-side or demand-side economics. If you have a “sales job” you are pushing a product that resides in “supply side” economics. You have products that in some cases nobody actually needs, but your company needs these products pushed out the door so that the product developers and the company can make money. The sales people are the ones bringing money in the door of the company. In the technology world, sales people make the lion’s share of the money – maybe about 50%. Product development gets about 40%, and product support gets about 10%. If you listen to business self-help gurus, they ALL tell you that no matter what business you’re in, you need sales people or you’re not going to make it.

I’m not here to talk about demand-side economics because I don’t know much about demand-side economics. McDonald’s still needs a sales team to get burgers out the door, and this is most visibly done via advertising and marketing campaigns. It’s not easy to keep a brick and mortar business open more than 5 years. People that try to escape the matrix by opening their own “Mom & Pop Coffee Shop” generally don’t make it, and my guess is one of the factors is they have no idea how to bring paying customers in the door. Who knows how many are plain ignorant of the sales-factor.

The vocabulary of sales is either stolen, lifted, or riffing off of Christian evangelism. Sellers are on a “campaign.” A campaign in religion is a crusade. A campaign in sales is pushing a product to as many people across the country as possible. Statistics are boiled down to a ratio of contacts to “conversions.” A conversion in religion is somebody who joins the religion. A conversion in sales is a person who buys. This is all kept track of by managers who discuss “the numbers” in terms of “conversion ratios.”

I digress…

Philosophy for you the salesperson doing sales

I’m going to tell you that a sales job is actually a pretty sweet job. Or at least, it can be. And you can do a lot of self-improvement while doing sales. And you should do a lot of self-improvement while doing sales.

First of all, the way to sell is to be a positive person. NO NEGATIVITY. There is not one case I know of where negativity has ever helped anyone sell a product. Negativity will only get in the way and you will lose the sale. Every customer you talk to in sales is your new best friend. You’re doing them a favor, and you care about them for as long as you are talking to them on the phone.

I recommend you get a standing desk and stand up during your entire shift, or as much as you possibly can.

I recommend you quit caffeine. I also recommend you include plenty of meat in your diet if not become full-on carnivore. Alas, this little book is not so much about health and diet advice. But, if you want to do sales, you need think of the best version of yourself that you want to be, and start working your way to becoming that person. You are not just selling the product. In fact, when you are on the phone the customer isn’t even looking at the product. The customer is talking to you, and technically what they’re really buying in the beginning is “you.” Thus, the more organized, healthy, and cleaned up you can be as a salesperson, the better your sales results will be. Eg, you will get more “conversions” and your conversion ratio will improve.

If you’re at a good company with a good team, and reasonable sales managers, you will notice that team positivity is there all day every day. Everybody is staying positive and cheering everybody else on. Sales is the ONE job I know of that is like that. It’s like that kind of out of necessity. Because as I said before, negativity doesn’t bring money in the door. There might be other jobs out there that are loaded with positivity, but in my opinion sales is the main job out there that has positivity built right into the model. If you’re ever stuck at a crappy job where everybody is negative, try getting a sales job. You should notice a difference if you’re at a good, or at least reasonable, company.

But…

Sometimes it’s not all 100% positive.

I hate to say this, but sometimes there can be negativity that appears in sales. First of all, yes, there are a lot of rude and negative customers in sales. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Because, rude and negative customers are always something you can overcome. In fact, that’s what the job is partially about – overcoming the worst people you’ve ever met. I suppose I can talk about this aspect in another chapter.

The negativity that will be the toughest to overcome will come from your managers.

Speaking of managers and supervisors, and “moving up” in a company – this book is not about that. This book isn’t even about “getting rich.” I’m not going to tell you that you can “get rich” by doing sales. Yes, you can make more money in sales, but I’m not going to tell you you’re going to become a millionaire or billionaire etc. There are fantastic books about “How to get rich” and I recommend you read those if you want to get rich. In fact, maybe you are on the path toward getting rich right now, but part of this path means that right now you are doing a sales job first. So this book is for people in that position. I can’t tell you “move up in the company, bro, it’s the way to go.” This book is for you to understand what it means to be a phone sales jockey, how to plow through it, how to be good at it, and how to make it to where you can do this sort of job indefinitely if you have to without breaking a sweat.

So back to what I was talking about regarding negativity that suddenly appears in sales jobs. It comes from your manager first, and then it may or may not trickle down to your supervisor. Your supervisor has the WORST job in the company. Unless you’re into punishment, I advise you don’t aim to become a supervisor. The supervisor is great for you though, because he stands between you and the manager. You’re on a team, and what you want is to become somewhere #1, #2, or #3 or the team. #1 is great, but then if you’re at the #1 spot too long, the company might try and promote you to supervisor and like I said, I’m not here to help you or advise you to go there. I’m here to explain this job to you. The job of setting appointments. What you want from your supervisor are two things. 1) A great relationship. And 2) you want your supervisor off your back as much as possible. There’s going to be other people on the team that need help, and you don’t want to be the one that needs help. Ever.

Management is in the business of “reading the numbers.” Sigh. So management’s job is to squeeze the supervisors so that the supervisors can squeeze the salespeople. What’s the difference between you and the manager? A huge difference. And here’s where I get a bit esoteric. Salespeople believe in magic. Managers don’t. Which, in my opinion, that’s too bad for them. That’s kind of sad. I’m generalizing just a tad here. But magic is a very big portion of the sales job. You the salesperson are going to be working some magic. Magic and luck are going be part of your day, your week, your month, and your year. A lot needs to be talked about regarding magic.

Management doesn’t perform real magic. However, management may enjoy performing illusions. This is where things can be a bit tough to navigate for somebody who is new to sales. Because yes, you the salesperson are doing magic and seeing magic that you yourself are doing. And then you will see some other things that you don’t have control over and it will confuse you just a bit.

The Call Lists

Where do the lists come from? Management will never tell you where the lists come from. Generally the company will buy their call lists from a 3rd party. Let’s be real here. The lists are coming from Big Tech and AI. All the big names you’ve heard of are scraping data from anywhere and everywhere. It’s aggregated in different ways for different companies, and your company will buy the “list.”

A good company is going to have different style lists. You could say different lists are hotter and colder. But generally each list is going to have a conversion ratio associated with it. The hotter the conversion ratio, perhaps the lower bonus. Or the colder the conversion ratio, perhaps the higher the bonus. They may even have lists for naive new hires that they won’t tell anyone about so that new hires can feel good about their numbers and not leave the company so quickly. List management is sometimes list manipulation, a smoke and mirrors game to continue to inspire salespeople to do better and “push harder.” Example, “This new hire is doing great, what about our veterans? Wake up, people!”

Back to the management

You might notice that managers and sometimes even supervisors, are the only ones in sales who have a “right” to complain. Thus they may come across as two-faced, incongruent, or mixing their messages. Hopefully they don’t come across totally mental or bipolar, but, results can vary. If it’s too extreme, you want to find a new company to work for. You may also notice that they drink lots of caffeine. Whatever you do, don’t believe that caffeine will help your sales numbers.

There are really only two things you can do with negativity from management. 1) Play along in the moment – like if you’re in a meeting and they’re talking to you directly about it, 2) Ignore it. And I suppose there’s a third option where you can play along and then forget all about it when you’re back on the phone.

At the end of the day, you shouldn’t care one iota if the manager is concerned, upset, or in a bad mood. Nobody should really care. Life goes on, and you’ve got more sales to do regardless of whatever mood he’s in. If your supervisor is in a bad mood, it’s probably because the manager forced him to be, and in that case you can have a little bit of empathy. But remember this: be glad you’re not the supervisor. He took that gig, you didn’t. You’re just the phone jockey doing your thing.

Who are your coworkers?

Sales is kind of a job for people who really don’t know what to do with themselves. Lots of people sort “end up” in sales. Nobody really planned on it, nobody really dreamt about being a salesperson, and nobody really wanted to be a salesperson when they were in kindergarten. You will see a full spectrum of people from all walks of life. And unfortunately, you will see a full spectrum of dumb to intelligent as well. That is not to say that dumb people can’t sell. As a matter of fact, they can sell. It doesn’t help to be a dumb person, but just because you’re dumb or low IQ or don’t have a degree that doesn’t mean you can’t do well at sales. (I suppose there are limits as to how dumb a person can be, of course.) You don’t need to be particularly intelligent to do sales. You’re not building rockets. If you are intelligent, a sales job is going to sting a bit because you may feel that your intelligence is being wasted. Nevertheless, it’s not something you can’t cope with for a while. And, there are various ways to deal with the situation. Personally, no matter how many back-to-back calls I’m taking, I have a second computer open and I’m browsing the internet. I don’t recommend you do this until you are good at the job first.

Ok, I’m going to take a break here and come back to this later…