This past Tuesday I gave a presentation to the first class of the Skillz Academy about what I thought were the benefits of a career in sales, based on my philosophy of selling as detailed in my textbook, Media Selling, 5th Edition.
The Skillz Academy was founded by two Black friends of mine, who asked me to write the initial curriculum, based in Media Selling, for an eight-week course that would teach underutilized people of color to sell in the tech industry. The first cohort started the Louisiana state-certified course last week. Below are my remarks:
What do you think is the difference between a job and a career?
You take a job to make money in the short term regardless of the opportunity for learning and growth.
A career is a job for the long term with good learning and growth opportunities … with a good chance for advancement and promotions.
A career in technology sales is interesting and satisfying for a couple of reasons.
- Tech sales is interesting because you are dealing with two very challenging elements: Technology and people.
- Technology is interesting because it is continually changing. There’s always something new to learn. And, by the way, all companies, all organizations are now technology organizations because their productivity, survival and growth are dependent on technology. What this means is that there are virtually unlimited opportunities for a career in tech sales, especially for people of color because tech companies are making a major effort to diversify.
- People are even more complicated than technology. Therefore, understanding people – having emotional intelligence – and being able to connect with people is not only a critically important sales skill, but also, there is nothing more interesting than dealing with and figuring out people. In tech sales the soft skill of emotional intelligence is vital because the engineers who write the software and create algorithms are typically are not great with people, and they are usually not terrific communicators. Engineers need salespeople with emotional intelligence who are able to connect with prospective customers and can communicate effectively in a customer’s language about a product’s benefits.
- Tech sales is satisfying because connecting with people is in our DNA. We need to connect with, to cooperate with and to help other people. We want to socialize, to talk to others. And that’s what sales is: connecting with people, cooperating with them and helping them to meet challenges and solve problems.
- Because you get to meet and talk to a diverse group of people in sales, it’s not boring – you’re not just looking at a computer screen all day.
- Also, a career in sales has become more attractive since the pandemic hit. Dead-end, boring, low-paying jobs have become much less attractive and more dangerous. Interesting jobs with growth and a promising future have become much more attractive.
Sales has always been a job with high-growth potential. Many FORTUNE 500 CEOs have come up through sales and marketing because they understood the market and they understood customers.
One of the main reasons people in sales jobs move up is because their performance is measurable. Salespeople have a batting average, and good performance is noticeable and gets people promoted.
Another thing about a career in sales is that it has changed dramatically with the advent of the internet. Before the internet, sales was mostly about persuading people, even tricking them, into buying a product often whether they needed it or not. In that pre-internet era salespeople typically had an image of being pushy. The stereotype was the checked-sports-coat used-car huckster who used manipulative tricks and exaggerated unmercifully. Pre-internet salespeople had an advantage. They had much more information about their products, about the market and about competitive prices than consumers did.
The internet changed everything. After the introduction of the internet, consumers could get as much, if not more, information about a product as a salesperson had. Consumers could research their purchases, compare prices and could read product reviews before buying.
Because consumers have so much product information, salespeople today can’t over-exaggerate or lie about a product. Therefore, the number-one characteristic that post-internet salespeople must have is honesty. They have to be honest and straightforward in presenting facts.
And, as more and more products have new, technology-dependent features, post-internet selling is more about educating than about persuading.
Also, with technology-dependent products and services, selling is more about helping customers deal with challenges and solve problems than about pushing to close a deal.
Selling today is about honesty, educating and helping.
When you were young – 4, 5, 6 – what did you want to be when you grew up? A nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a fireman, a coach?
These are all professions that help people. It’s in our DNA to want to help people. Helping people gives our lives purpose, meaning and a sense of satisfaction.
I started my career selling media – television advertising. I loved it. It was fun. I got satisfaction from helping media buyers achieve their goals and from educating clients on the benefits of television.
I then went into media sales management which I loved even more because I felt that sales management was basically about helping and educating salespeople, not motivating them. I learned that you can’t motivate people — they are naturally motivated (or not). They come with curiosity, grit and determination (or not), and you can’t give people those qualities. The role of sales management is to create a culture and systems that unleash people’s natural motivation and determination to succeed and to educate them how to be successful.
Sales management is also about helping salespeople manage their careers – growing and getting promoted.
I learned how to hire people who were smarter than I was and who could replace me so I could get promoted.
And I did get promoted. I was a vice president of CBS and NBC. At NBC I was the general manager – the CEO in a sense – of radio stations NBC owned stations in Chicago and New York. I loved those jobs because it was about informing and entertaining people, which was both satisfying and fun.
Then I went into education – being a university professor in my 50s, 60s and 70s– which I found very satisfying and fulfilling because I was educating young people and helping them plan and start their careers.
Today, you’re probably not thinking about what you’re going to be doing when you’re 65 or 70, but I’d like for you to take a moment now and think about what you’d like to be doing when you’re that age.
When I was 70, I was teaching graduate courses – educating and helping young people – and I had never been happier.
I think you’ll be happy, too, with a career in sales in which you will educate and help people … and have fun doing so. And, you’ll also make enough money so you can retire comfortably and be proud of how you made your retirement money.
Who knows, you might even wind up teaching at the Skillz Academy because you’ve learned over the years to be a good educator and helper.
