Why There Will Always Be High Paying Sales Jobs

With the dot.com revolution crushing once solid business models on an almost daily basis, the question surely crosses one's mind "am I next?".

Selling is one of the oldest professions on the planet. We get paid to have fun doing what others find difficult, confusing, or just plain hard. Everyday someone's life is being made easier by new a technological innovation. And everyday another company figures out how to sell its product directly to its customer's through a web browser. It's tempting for our minds to see this pace of innovation, and wonder if professional salespeople will be innovated out of their jobs. I assert that the answer to this lies within each individual salesperson. Because the answer to this question is both a challenging Yes and secure No.

The challenge is and has always come from new innovations. You will be challenged by more, new, and greater innovations coming at you and your customers everyday, every hour, and every minute. What was good enough to get you where you are today, is no longer enough to keep you there. There are things that you can be very secure in knowing. One thing is that everything is changing. Master that, and you have secured the future.

A salesperson serves two masters - the customer and the producer. Once we accept that things will always be changing as a constant in our lives, it is easy to see the constant need for professional salespeople. Our role in serving our dual masters is simple - create more value for them than can be provided through a web browser. And we will rightly get paid handsomely when we add significant value.

A salesperson has always played two primary roles that add tremendous value. One is convenience. Convenience for the customer is helping the customer get her exact needs met when she wants them. Taking all of the potential ways, ideas, options, components, products, services, or properties that could meet her needs, and showing her which ones will now. Convenience for the company is getting the 8, 27, or 335 customers that she needs that year to grow the business and make a profit for the owners and shareholders. If the owners were to wait for the phone to ring without a salesperson, the company would be out of business in a flash.

The other role that the professional salesperson has always played is that of an advisor, or a broker of expertise. Helping a customer to understand complex applications of new products, new technology, new business service models, cannot be easily communicated through text, pictures, audio, or video. It is rightly a relationship grounded in face-to-face human dialogue and interaction. It is a give and take of the needs and desires of the customer and the capabilities and products of the producer.

What we do then is provide value to our customers and producers by providing convenience and expertise. As long as there are complex products being dreamed up by bright-minded innovators, and human beings with needs whom make purchasing decisions, there will be professional salespeople.

So who's most at risk? Industries for which the information about a product is relatively known and stable have progressively seen the need for the professional salesperson disappear. Today you go buy your groceries at a large supermarket, or maybe you have them delivered by WebVan. Years ago you would have gone to a market or bazaar in the center of town and haggled over the price of a few eggs or chickens with owner selling them. Now many producers of products and services with a stable knowledge components are going delivering that knowledge directly to the buyer, and bypassing the salesperson. Car buying is a prime example. People have despised the process of buying cars for years. The whole caricature the car salesman in our society has created a burdensome image that the professional salesperson has had to bear in all his social dealings with others. The major car companies are already planning on new business models where you shop for your car on the web, pick colors, features, and negotiate a price and financing. The dealership of the tomorrow is simply a place for taking a test drive and later picking up the completed custom built vehicle. If your business has a stable knowledge component, it will go directly to the customer. The only question is, how soon?

Constant change is a major source of security for us then. If we master change, we are in a position to offer tremendous value to people. There will always be new ideas, new products, and new services. When ideas, products, and services are new, they are often raw or seemingly complex by their very nature. In this environment the professional salesperson can be a real hero.

What about face-to-face sales calls? Will broadband Internet capabilities eliminate the need to visit our customers or for our customers to visit us in person? Have you noticed that a dog knows when you are scared of him? If you act scared, a barking dog will become more aggressive towards you. If you act unfazed and unafraid of that barking dog he will most often try to intimidate you from a safe distance. 55% of all communication comes through in our physiology. How we breathe, gesture, sit, stand, move, twitch, and blink all serves to communicate to another person, or even an animal. 37% of our communication is in the tonality of our voice. How fast or slow you speak, the pitch of your voice, the volume?.. You may notice that you can read this sentence aloud as a statement or as a question, can't you. And the tonality is different in either case, imparting a very understandable meaning to whom you are speaking with. The words that we choose to communicate with, represent only 7% of all communication. Only 7%. This is why many people have a difficult time with the traditional classroom based teaching style of the American school system. With 93% of human communication coming through nonverbal forms, can broadband eliminate the need for in-person meetings? (look at all of the dot.com entrepreneurs congregating along US 101 in Silicon Valley)

When we succeed in recreating the fine sensory awareness of human sight, hearing, feeling, smell, and taste, then we will no longer need to go anywhere to meet anyone. We will be able to stay plugged into in our little pods, providing resources for the machines to feed off of, like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix. Until that day humans have a high need to use their full sensory awareness, receiving and communicating 90%+ of their thoughts and emotions through nonverbal means.

We still have sales calls to make, and we still have customers who want us to make them. Just as the telephone made the job of selling easier, so will the Internet for those who learn how master it, and not let it master them.

Shamus Brown is a Professional Sales Coach and former high-tech sales pro who began his career selling for IBM. Shamus has written more than 50 articles on selling and is the creator of the popular Persuasive Selling Skills CD Audio Program. You can read more of Shamus Brown's sales tips at http://Sales-Tips.industrialEGO.com/ and you can learn more about his persuasive sales skills training at http://www.Persuasive-Sales-Skills.com/

---

Challenge Yourself!!! Evaluate Your Selling Skills!

This evaluation is not for the "weak-kneed". Real questions to... Read More

How to Build A Steady Stream of Customers--Step One

The success of a small business depends upon a steady... Read More

No Regrets

Here's a chilling thought. If you were to die tomorrow,... Read More

Web Promotion: 10 Amazing Web Promotion Ways To Jump Start Your Sales

Hello, do you have a website and sell something on... Read More

A Look at Child Mannequins

Not all mannequins are made to look like full-grown adults.... Read More

Refining Your Telephone Prospecting Techniques To Be A Master Closer!

Let me create a picture for you. This is the... Read More

Is Sales Profession an Oxymoron?

If you are in Sales, you have probably heard these... Read More

How to Build Sales With Extended Benefits

An area that can become profitable for many businesses in... Read More

6 Ways To Get More From Your Promotions

1. Settle On The Right Way ForwardThe purpose of your... Read More

Leveraging Yourself Up To Executives When Selling

The fastest way to get a decision made is to... Read More

Flea Marketing Lessons

A few days ago, I was signing copies of my... Read More

Lazy Man?s Way To Get Customers

No matter how big or small your business is and... Read More

Buying Mortgage Leads - Three Things to Consider

The time comes for all mortgage brokers and loan officers... Read More

What Do Mobile Auto Detailers Clean When it Rains?

A mobile auto detailer and their profits are tied to... Read More

Looong and Boooring Sales Letters

You have all seen them,the sales letters that never ends.... Read More

Sell YOU With Your Small Talk (Yes You Can)

Want to build a relationship -- sell yourself for a... Read More

Sales Letters - How to Write Them

You could just send out your brochure to potential customers... Read More

Focus on a Trade - Not a Discount

Smart buyers will always ask for a better price. Unfortunately,... Read More

How to Revive a Dead Lead

It's easy to spend days, weeks, or months speaking with... Read More

Book Yourself Solid

THE 7 KEYS TO GETTING MORE CLIENTS THAN YOU CAN... Read More

Selling For Keeps

When you are in sales and you come across a... Read More

How to Create Material That Will Get You Sales Now!

WHY ARE YOU WRITING THIS BROCHURE OR SALES LETTER? A... Read More

Losing the Big-One: Salvaging Lost Accounts

After careful consideration, we have chosen our vendor, and it's... Read More

When the Nose of the Camel is in the Tent

My new job was to sell Commercial Service Agreements. It... Read More

How to Give Your Customers a Choice Between You and the Competition and Have Them Choose You

Instead of giving your customers or potential customers a choice... Read More

Handling Objections

HANDLING OBJECTIONSSales presentation is not always going to be plain... Read More

Sales 101: Handling The Angry Customer

I am often reminded of the following true story whenever... Read More

The Wall of Defensiveness: 7 Ways to Tear It Down

Have you ever gotten frustrated when you realize that your... Read More

Keep the Referrals Coming

A key method of our survival in the business and... Read More

What Successful Sellers Know - Others Dont ... The Subtle Art of Closing

Ask any salesperson, "At what point in the selling process... Read More

My Competitor Has a Better Product

The topic of this issue's article is a response to... Read More

EXHIBITORS - Check Your URL

How many of you have a corporate web site? Everybody... Read More

First, Fast, And Foremost . . .

First - being before all others. Fast - moving or... Read More