Examine your motivations.
Why would you accept a job offer from a company seeking to hire a salesperson?
Is it salary, commission, benefits, travel, prestige, perks, the adrenaline-rush of closing a sale, is it about satisfying your innate ‘hunter’ instinct, the challenge of meeting and exceeding quotas, or is it a sense of duty and loyalty to your prospective employer? If these are your priorities I wouldn’t hire you. I don’t need your loyalty or your hunter instinct.
Today’s visionary employers no longer want traditional, self-serving, in-it-for-the-kill salespeople. Those salespeople died with polyester suits, telemarketing, walk-in office cold-calls and the word ‘solutions’. Today’s visionary employers are interested in only one thing … self-starting salespeople with loyalty to only one person. The CUSTOMER. Satisfy the customer at a profit. Personal and corporate success and wealth will follow.
Visionary employers don’t hire sales staff, they hire first-responders … professionals for whom the customers’ welfare is their priority. Selling today is a profession. The definition of a ‘professional’ is the man or woman, who is entirely customer-centred. Customers want to be taken care of not taken for a ride. Customers need service so that they have the time, energy and money to take care of their customers, families and themselves. The salesperson that puts her customers first (as emergency first-responders do) makes it very difficult for her competitors to step in. Take care of your customers and they’ll tell others how to find you. Take care of your customers and your employer will be too busy laughing all the way to the bank to replace you. Take care of your customers and they will take care of you. Learn to give first.
Customers need allies, collaborators, first-responders, people covering their backs. They don’t need another salesman.