The Salesman

Selling is more than a profession; it is a way of life.

As Mazen Farah, partner at HEED with might & main, mentioned in one of his public speeches, an Entrepreneur is simply a person who is not happy with the status quo and takes initiative to change it. He added that a salesman is an entrepreneur but on a different level.

“So be careful whom you call a salesman, lest you flatter him.”

People, whether a client or a fresh graduate, misconceive the power of the salesman in the society. This is an iterative loop in which graduates are afraid of entering the sales profession because

1. Most clients do not believe that the salesman’s offer will extremely add value to their business model.
2. Not only clients have this thought, but society also, which leads to difficulties in hiring good salespeople within the organizations.

We at HEED thought of sharing this article sent by Donald Benenson to Zig Ziglar in order to stress on the equistisness of the sales profession.

Salesmen are big problems to their bosses, customers and wives, to credit managers, hotels, and sometimes to each other. Individually and collectively they are cussed and discussed in sales meetings, conventions, behind closed doors, in bathrooms, bar rooms, and under one’s breath from many angles, and with much fervor.

They make more noise and more mistakes, create more cheer, correct more errors, adjust more differences, spread more gossip, explain more discrepancies, hear more grievances, pacify more belligerence, and waste more time under pressure, all without losing their temper, than any class we know—including ministers. They live in hotels, cabs and tents on trains, buses, and park benches, eat all kinds of food, drink all kinds of liquids—good and bad—sleep before, during and after business with no more schedule than the weather bureau, and with no sympathy from the office.

Yet salesmen are a power in society and in the public economy. In many ways they are tribute unto themselves. They draw and spend more money with less effort, and less return, than any other group in business. They come at the most inopportune time, under the slightest pretext, stay longer under more opposition, ask more personal questions, make more comments, put up with more inconveniences and take more for granted under greater resistance than any group or body, including the U.S. Army. They introduce more new goods, dispose of more old goods, load or move more freight cars, unload more ships, build more factories, start more new business- es, and write more debits and credits in our ledgers than all the other people in America. With all their faults, they keep wheels of commerce turning, and the currents of human emotions running. More cannot be said of any man. So be careful whom you call a salesman, lest you flatter him.