How Salesmen Romanticize Themselves

In keeping with the cartoon, I've had more experience where the sales guy was extoling the benefits of rubber swords.

This is how I feel a lot of the time. Way too many liars and products that don't perform to the listed or stated standards.

Great presentations that say a lot with a lot of things left out due to lack of education or background knowledge of products and industry.

Like don't confuse me with the facts, just tell me what I want to hear and make me feel like the I own the game, # 1, the best.

Keep it simple, to the point, and free lots of fun & prizes

ooh by the way dont break the budget. Just leave out those parts for the next budget cycle. There are a lot of great products and those perform and are the cats meow .

Great Cartoon, Keep up the good work

Sales "People" often get a bad rap, but there are bad customer's, too, and I've run into plenty of the ones like in the cartoon. Maybe the sales relationship between customers and salespeople is just a reflection of relationships in society these days, more about "how can I get the most for myself out of this" rather than "what do we have in common and how can we benefit each other".

So there are TWO people out there who worked for both Object Video and B.S Labs??

I was surprised to hear that one exsisted...

What are they selling now? Ice to Eskimos?

Sales people are an easy target. Look at how we're typically portrayed in the media ( Herb Tarlek, Glenngary etc.) They're all show and no substance and most would be lucky to spell CAT if you spot them the C & the A. Hey it wouldn't be a stereotype if it wasn't true - right?

The reality though is the best salespeople are nothing like the stereotype. They're hard working, self disciplined and want to create long term relationships with their customers. They're there at the beginning creating the opportunity, they see it through the implementation and are there after the sale to provide whatever support the customer needs. They don't make promises they can't keep, disappear the moment the PO comes in or avoid the problem calls if things don’t go as planned

The very best understand that they need to listen twice as much as they talk and be able to communicate with everyone they deal with in a language they can understand. They also know that sometimes they have to say No, whether it's to a price concession a feature request or a specification their product can't meet

They also know the job isn't 9-5. It's using those hours to make the phone calls, drive to the meetings and get in front of the customers - prospective or existing. After that is when they create proposals, design the systems, learn about the competition or answer that day’s e-mails.

So go ahead and joke about us, we're used to it. We have a lot of experience dealing with rejection. We'll just shrug it off and keep trying to grow your business.

As someone who has been selling something all his life, I have to throw in my two cents.........first let me say that there is nothing romantic about this occupation regardless of what you are selling. So fellow salesmen, don't fool yourselves. 40 years of selling is giving you some advice.......it's a living, that's all.

Second, I would like to say that there are some of us, even selling in this industry, that have morals and scruples and we do not deter from those. In the 17 years with the same integrator, my company has twice added manufacturers to our product line that I refused to sell. One was a VMS/camera/housing manufacturer and the other was an access control software provider. Although the company had these products "in the line" for several years in both cases, I did not sell those products........not once. Had I sold those products I would have been doing my customers a great injustice. If you are a career salesperson, burning bridges by giving customers bad advice is career shortening to say the least. I can honestly say that if I left the company I am with today and went to the competitors camp, many if not all my customers would at least consider following me.

Lastly, my advice to all you who have salesman-phobia and consider us just one step above crooked lawyers, when you do need to buy something or need some product knowledge that you can't gleen from the white papers written by..guess who...salesmen, find a source that has a sales culture based on the needs of the customer not one that is based on the "here, go sell this product to every body you meet" philosophy. When a company has a product that they are bent on selling to every prospect, that company grows the kind of salespeople you all make fun of........as do I.

I completely agree that these are challenges faced by every salesperson. I sometimes wish that I could take every young person on the day that they decide to take their first sales job, sit them down and say " here are the things you must avoid at all costs". In that lecture would be the importance of telling your customers the truth and avoiding parroting the "too good to be true" claims from manufacturers and how to recognize them. The most important part of the lecture, however, would be listening. If we as salespeople would listen to our customers how much better off would our relationships be? We all sell something, even if it is just ourselves. Think about IPVM. It was built because you listened to what your customers had to say and you gave them what they needed, be it brutally honest at times, it is still based on need.