Why Sales Jobs Are So Rewarding

For most professional salespeople, it is precisely the complexity and challenge of their jobs that motivate them to perform at a high level and give them a sense of satisfaction. A number of surveys over the years have found generally high levels of job satisfaction among professional salespeople across a broad cross-section of firms and industries. Even when these surveys do find areas of dissatisfaction, the unhappiness tends to focus on the policies and actions of the salesperson’s firm or sales manager, not on the nature of the sales job itself.²

Why are so many professional salespeople so satisfied with their jobs? Attractive aspects of selling careers include the following:

1. Autonomy. Freedom of action and opportunities for personal initiative.
2. Job variety. Multifaceted and challenging activities (these sales activities will be addressed later in this chapter).
3. Opportunity for rewards. Salespeople hired right out of college tend to start at higher salaries than most other professions and tend to keep up well during their careers with the compensation of their peers outside of sales (due to sales compensation being linked directly to performance).
4. Favorable working conditions. Many sales positions involve telecommuting with a virtual office, and with less minute-to-minute direct supervision than most other careers.
5. Ability to move up the organization. Sales frequently offers great opportunities for career development and advancement.

Each of these advantages of selling jobs will now be discussed in more detail.

Job Autonomy. A common complaint among workers in many professions is that they are too closely supervised. They chafe under the micromanagement of bosses and about rules and standard operating procedures that constrain their freedom to do their jobs as they see fit. Salespeople, on the other hand, spend most of their time working directly with customers, with no one around to supervise their every move. They are relatively free to organize their own time and to get the job done in their own way as long as they show good results.

The freedom of a selling career appeals to people who value their independence, who are confident they can cope with most situations they will encounter, and who like to show personal initiative in deciding how to get the job done. However, with this freedom come potential pressures. Salespeople are responsible for managing their existing customer relationships and developing new ones. Although no one closely supervises their behavior, management usually keeps close tabs on the results of that behavior: sales volume, quota attainment, expenses, and the like.

To be successful, then, salespeople must be able to manage themselves, organize time wisely, and make the right decisions about how to do the job. Ethical Dilemma examines how the nature of this high degree of freedom—job autonomy—can sometimes create opportunities that also can cause challenges.

Job Variety. If variety is the spice of life, sales jobs are hot peppers. Most people soon become bored doing routine tasks. Fortunately, boredom is seldom a problem among professional salespeople, whose work tends to be high in job variety. Each customer has different needs and problems for which the salesperson can develop unique solutions. Those problems are often anything but trivial, and a salesperson must display insight, creativity, and analytical skill to close a sale. Many sales consultants expect creative problem solving to become even more important to sales success in the future.

To make the sales job even more interesting, the internal and external environments are constantly changing (as we learned in chapter 1). Salespeople must frequently adjust their sales presentations and other activities to shifts in economic and competitive conditions.

Opportunities for Rewards. For many people in the selling profession, variety and challenge are the most rewarding aspects of their jobs. These aspects help develop a sense of accomplishment and personal growth. As we will see in chapter 11, they are important sources of intrinsic rewards (rewards inherent to satisfaction derived from elements of the job or role itself), as opposed to extrinsic rewards (rewards bestowed on the salesperson by the company).

Make no mistake, though—selling can be a very lucrative profession in terms of extrinsic rewards as well! More importantly, a salesperson’s earnings (particularly one who receives a large proportion of incentive pay) are determined largely by performance, and often no arbitrary limits are placed on them. Consequently, a salesperson’s compensation can grow faster and reach higher levels than that of employees at a comparable level in other departments.

Favorable Working Conditions. If the stereotypes of sales jobs addressed earlier were true, salespeople would be expected to travel extensively, spend much of their time entertaining potential clients, and have little time for home and family life. Such a situation represents a lack of balance between work life and family life such that work is encroaching on family—work/family conflict. But it is not an accurate description of the working conditions of most salespeople. Some selling jobs require extensive travel, but most salespeople can be home nearly every night. Indeed, with the increasing use of computer networks, email, and video conferencing, the trend for over a decade has been toward telecommuting. More and more salespeople work from a remote or virtual office, often at home, and seldom even travel to their companies’ offices.³ Telecommuting offers many advantages for salespeople and efficiency and cost savings to the sales organization, but virtual offices do create a challenge for sales managers. They must keep the sales force fully socialized to the culture of the organization.

Ability to Move Up in the Organization. Given the wealth of knowledge about a firm’s customers, competitors, and products—and the experience at building effective relationships—that a sales job can provide, it is not surprising that iconic leaders like Sam Palmisano, former CEO at IBM and A. G. Lafley, CEO at Procter & Gamble, often come up through the sales ranks into the executive suite. Jeff Immelt spent more than 20 years in various sales and marketing positions at General Electric before being named the successor to Jack Welch as CEO. Anne Mulcahy, former Chairwoman and CEO of Xerox, spent most of her 30 years at the company in sales. She advises that those who climb the corporate ladder from the sales rung need to be willing to take on nonsales-oriented assignments along the way to broaden their experience.

Although salespeople are sometimes reluctant to give up their high-paying jobs to move into managerial positions, most firms recognize the importance of good managerial talent and reward it appropriately, particularly as a person reaches the top executive levels of the sales organization. Total compensation of over $250,000 a year is not unheard of for national sales managers or vice presidents of sales in large firms.

Of course, many managerial opportunities are available to successful salespeople at lower levels of the corporate hierarchy as well, most obviously in sales management, product or brand management, and general marketing management. A survey of human resource managers found that sales professionals are among the most sought-after employees.⁴ Exhibit 2.1 shows several possible career tracks for salespeople.

Exhibit 2.1 From Salesperson to CEO

Despite the obvious upside, promoting top salespeople into management can sometimes cause problems. Successful selling often requires personal skills and abilities that are different from those required for successful management. There is no guarantee that a good salesperson will be a good sales manager. Also, successful salespeople have been known to refuse promotion to managerial positions because they enjoy selling, or they can make more money in sales than in management, or both. Finally, recent trends toward corporate downsizing, flatter organizational structures, outsourcing, and cross-functional selling teams have changed the number and nature of managerial opportunities available for successful salespeople. The sales manager of the future is more likely to be a coach or team leader than an authority figure isolated in the upper reaches of a corporate hierarchy. We will explore these ongoing changes in the nature of the sales manager’s job in more detail in Part Three of the book.

Listening Skills

The top-rated item is listening skills. Other research has found that buyer–seller relationships are significantly strengthened when salespeople consistently employ effective listening skills.⁶,⁷ Good listeners pay close attention to the buyer, carefully assessing his or her needs. Ironically, selling courses and sales training seminars almost always focus more on teaching salespeople to speak and write than to listen.

Follow-up Skills

As we learned in chapter 1, a key difference between transactional and relationship selling is the effort devoted to the ongoing maintenance of the relationship, especially in between face-to-face encounters with the customer. EMC Corporation, a computer storage company, has a reputation for being obsessed with follow-up. Its sales and service teams work hard to anticipate and fix trouble before the client even recognizes a problem. Anything from a toppled storage system to a change in the storage room’s temperature causes the boxes to beam home warning messages and activate a response from EMC reps, often before the client is aware of the situation. Locations in 24 countries position their more than 250 individuals and teams to quickly follow up in person if necessary. In fact, the CEO of EMC has been known to respond in person within eight hours in the case of a severe service failure.

Source: Reprinted from Greg W. Marshall, Daniel J. Goebel, and William C. Moncrief, “Hiring for Success at the Buyer-Seller Interface,” Journal of Business Research 56 (April 2003), pp. 247–55, Copyright 2003, with permission from Elsevier.

Ability to Adapt Sales Style from Situation to Situation

Adaptive selling is the altering of sales behaviors during a customer interaction or from one situation to another based on information the sales rep gathers about the nature of the selling situation.⁸ Adaptive salespeople are more successful since understanding customers’ needs and problems lets them provide solutions that add value.⁹

Tenacity—Sticking with a Task

Nurturing customer relationships is a long-term proposition. The objective is not to simply close a sale with one client and then move on to the next. The process of managing relationships requires patience and the willingness to work with a client, often over very long periods, before the potential benefits of the relationship to both parties are realized. Along the way setbacks often occur that must be overcome. Great salespeople always keep the big picture in mind while working on the details. This perspective facilitates tenacity and yields results that are worth the wait.

Well Organized

As the content and responsibilities of sales jobs have increased in complexity and buying organizations have become more complicated for salespeople to navigate, the ability to skillfully prioritize and arrange the work has become a more important success factor. Good organization is a component of effective time and territory management. These and other aspects of self-management are covered in detail in chapter 10.

Verbal Communication Skills

Salespeople must be great communicators, especially of their value proposition. Communicating the sales message is the topic of chapter 6. Note that talking skills, while obviously critical to sales success, are rated lower in importance than listening skills.

Proficiency in Interacting with People at All Levels of a Customer’s Organization

Selling often involves communication and interaction with many people within the client’s firm besides the purchasing agent. Later in this chapter we will identify individuals in other roles within customers’ firms that may be just as important to the sales rep as the actual buyer.

Demonstrated Ability to Overcome Objections

As mentioned in chapter 1, customers often have a number of concerns about any given purchase that the salesperson must work to overcome. Objections are a natural and expected part of any sales process. The sales rep can minimize them by developing a trusting relationship with the client over the long run and by working to negotiate win-win solutions. Chapter 8 takes up the topic of customer objections in more detail.

Closing Skills

Closing is of paramount importance, but a win-win approach to negotiating makes closing a much less arduous process for a salesperson. In chapter 9 you will learn about a variety of different approaches to closing a sale.

Personal Planning and Time Management Skills

Like being well organized, being good at personal planning and managing your time will serve you well in a sales career. Nowadays, both these success factors are aided substantially by technology, including smartphones, laptop computers, and email. Chapter 10 addresses a variety of self-management topics.

Selling in B2C versus B2B Markets

In terms of sheer numbers, most salespeople are employed in various kinds of retail selling. These jobs involve selling goods and services to end-user consumers for their own personal use. These salespeople are selling in the business-to-consumer (B2C) market. Examples are direct sellers (Avon, Tupperware, etc.), residential real estate brokers, and retail store salespeople. However, much more contemporary selling is accounted for by the business-to-business (B2B) market (which used to be commonly called industrial selling)—the sale of goods and services to buyers who are not the end users. Business-to-business markets involve three types of customers:

1. Sales to resellers, as when a salesperson for Hanes sells underwear to a retail store, which in turn resells the goods to its customers.
2. Sales to business users, as when a salesperson for General Electric sells materials or parts to Boeing, which uses them to produce another product; or when a Xerox salesperson sells a copier to a law firm for use in conducting the firm’s business.
3. Sales to institutions, as when a salesperson for Lenovo sells 20 laptops to a nonprofit hospital or a government agency.

Sometimes the key success factors and sales activities relevant to B2C and B2B markets and to managing the two types of sales forces are very similar. Success in both types of selling requires interpersonal and communications skills, solid knowledge of the products being sold, an ability to discover customers’ needs and solve their problems, and the creativity to show customers how a particular product or service can help satisfy those needs and solve these problems. Similarly, managers must recruit and train appropriate people for both types of sales jobs, provide them with objectives consistent with the firm’s overall marketing or merchandising program, supervise them, motivate them, and evaluate their performance.

But B2C and B2B selling also differ in some important ways. Many of the goods and services sold by B2B salespeople are more expensive and technically complex than those in B2C. B2B customers tend to be larger and to engage in extensive decision-making processes involving many people. Therefore, the key success factors and activities involved in selling to business buyers are often quite different from those in retail selling. Furthermore, the decisions made to manage a B2B sales force are broader than those required for a B2C sales force. Although some topics in this book apply reasonably well to both types of selling situations, others apply more directly to the B2B. Overall this book focuses more on the B2B side of contemporary selling.

Note that many sellers work in both the B2C and B2B markets. An insurance agent, for example, sells automobile policies to both individual drivers and company fleet managers.

Types of B2B Sales Jobs

Even within B2B selling, many different types of jobs exist that require different skills. One of the most useful classification systems for sales jobs identifies four types of B2B selling found across a variety of industries.¹⁵

1. Trade servicer. The sales force’s primary responsibility is to increase business from current and potential customers by providing them with merchandising and promotional assistance. The “trade” referred to in the label is the group of resellers, such as retailers or distributors, with whom this sales force does business. A Procter & Gamble rep selling soap and laundry products to chain-store personnel is an example of trade selling.
2. Missionary seller. The sales force’s primary job is to increase business from current and potential customers by providing product information and other personal selling assistance. Missionary salespeople often do not take orders from customers directly but persuade customers to buy their firm’s product from distributors or other wholesale suppliers. Anheuser-Busch does missionary selling when its salespeople call on bar owners and encourage them to order a particular brand of beer from the local Budweiser distributor. Similarly, pharmaceutical company reps, or detailers, call on doctors. When Pfizer first introduced Celebrex, an arthritis drug, its salespeople alerted the physicians in their areas to the efficacy of the product, explained its advantages over traditional pain relievers, and influenced them to prescribe it to their patients. Note that Pfizer sales reps normally don’t “sell” any product directly to physicians.
3. Technical seller. The sales force’s primary responsibility is to increase business from current and potential customers by providing technical and engineering information and assistance. An example is a sales engineer from the General Electric jet engine company calling on Boeing. Most technical selling nowadays is accomplished through cross-functional selling teams because many of the products and associated services are so complex that it is difficult for any one salesperson to master all aspects of the sale.
4. New-business seller. The sales force’s primary responsibility is to identify and obtain business from new customers—that is, securing and building the customer relationship. Salespeople performing this role are sometimes referred to as Business Development Managers.

Each type of sales job involves somewhat different activities and thus different key success factors.

Like many firm activities in the 21^st Century, the selling function in a firm is sometimes outsourced. An outsourced sales force entails hiring sales agents—who usually work for a broker organization—that specialize in selling particular types of product lines within the hiring firm’s channel of distribution. These brokers usually represent numerous product lines that are not in direct competition in order to avoid conflict of interest. They are most often paid a straight percentage of sales revenue, thus shifting the sales function for the hiring firm to a purely variable cost model. For the broker salesperson him/herself, the characteristics and activities involved in the job are not much different from those of company-specific salespeople.¹⁶

In order to truly understand the selling process, why successful salespeople do what they do, and how they manage their efforts effectively, you must understand how customers make purchase decisions. The next sections shift the focus of our discussion from the selling side to the buying side. We will examine the participants in the B2B buying process, the stages of this buying process, and finally the nature of organizational buying situations.

Selling Centers and Buying Centers

Since major customers’ buying centers often consist of people from different functional areas with different viewpoints and concerns, those concerns often can be addressed most effectively by a team of experts from equivalent functional departments in the selling firm, or even from different divisions within the company. Recently, companies have begun to use a selling center approach that brings together individuals from around the organization (marketing, customer service, sales, engineering, and others) as a team to join the salesperson who has primary responsibility for a customer. In this way, just as customers have buying centers, the selling organization works together to present a unified, well-coordinated effort to the customer.²¹

The key is establishing a team-selling structure within the sales organization to meet customer needs. One common structure makes the salesperson (account manager) responsible for working with the entire selling team to manage the customer relationship. Often such customer relationship teams include representatives from functional departments like R&D, operations, and finance. Increasingly, customer relationship teams maintain offices in or very near the customer’s facilities.

Since different members of the buying center may be active at different stages of the purchase process, an important part of sales planning involves determining whom the sales organization should contact, when each contact should be made, who within the selling team should make each contact, and what kinds of information and communication each buying center member is likely to find most useful and persuasive.

At Siebel Systems, a part of Oracle and the world’s largest producer of CRM software, the team for a major account like Marriott is led by a Siebel account executive who has a global team of salespeople as direct reports but can also draw from the full functional resources of Siebel to provide solutions for GM at any location in the world. This approach creates a matrix organization of direct reports and supporting internal consultants at Siebel who bring their collective expertise to bear for this major client.

Team selling can present some coordination, motivation, and compensation problems. Lou Gerstner, former Chairman and CEO of IBM, has frequently spoken out publicly on the difficulties of performance management in team-selling environments. In fact, it is a key theme in the book Who Says the Elephant Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround that Gerstner released after retiring, about rebuilding IBM toward a truly global I.T. consultancy.²³, ²⁴ And just like any team environment, the sales organization and its managers must be diligent in working to minimize conflict among team members that is bound to arise from time to time. Otherwise, benefits brought to bear by the selling team can easily be overshadowed by squabbling team members, thus impacting the performance with the client.²⁵ Given that today’s sales environment is by nature global, new opportunities exist for utilizing technology to make the team experience more seamless on a global basis. Global Connection provides ideas on using global virtual sales teams.

Team selling is expensive and involves a substantial commitment of human resources, including management. Thus, team-based approaches tend to be most appropriate for the very largest customers (especially those with buying centers) whose potential business over time represents enough revenue and entails enough cross-functional interaction among various areas of both firms to justify the high costs. Such customers are often referred to as key accounts. They generally have a senior salesperson as the key account manager (KAM).²⁶,²⁷,²⁸ The extent to which KAM practices are embedded within a company is strongly related to a variety of outcomes that favor the customer such as increased customer satisfaction, relational improvement, and joint investment.²⁹

Stage One: Anticipation or Recognition of a Problem or Need

Many organizational purchases are motivated by the requirements of the firm’s production processes, merchandise inventory, or day-to-day operations. Such demand for goods and services is derived demand. That is, needs are derived from the firm’s customers’ demand for the goods or services it produces or markets. For example, the demand for luggage is derived in part from the demand for air travel. The luggage department at Macy’s Department Store loses customers, and Samsonite (a leading luggage manufacturer) loses customers, when people don’t travel. This characteristic of derived demand can make organizational markets quite volatile, because a small change in the market can result in a large (relatively speaking) change in the organization’s sales.

Many different situations can lead someone to recognize a need for a particular product or service. Need recognition may be almost automatic, as when the computerized inventory control system at Walmart reports that the stock of an item has fallen below the reorder level. Or a need may arise when someone identifies a better way of operating, as at the American Airlines Maintenance and Equipment Base when an engineer or mechanic suggests a better procedure than the current practice.

New needs might also evolve when the focus of the firm’s operations changes, as when top management decides to make a new product line. Procter & Gamble introduced Crest Whitestrips, which sell for considerably more on the grocer’s shelf than most other Crest products such as toothpaste and mouthwash, because P&G wanted to get into the business of more professional products that will raise its average sale and profit per item. In all these situations, needs may be recognized—and the purchasing process initiated—by a variety of people in the organization, including users, technical personnel, top management, and purchasing managers.

Stage Two: Determination and Description of the Traits and Quantity of the Needed Item(s)

In organizational buying settings, the types and quantities of goods and services to be purchased are usually dictated by the demand for the firm’s outputs and by the requirements of its production process and operations. The criteria used in specifying the needed materials and equipment must usually be technically precise. Similarly, the quantities needed must be carefully considered to avoid excessive inventories or downtime caused by lack of needed materials. For these reasons, a variety of technical experts, as well as the people who will use the materials or equipment, are commonly involved in this stage of the decision process.

It is not enough for the using department and the technical experts to develop a detailed set of specs for the needed item, however. They must also communicate to other members of the buying center and to potential suppliers a clear and precise description of what is needed, how much is needed, and when it is needed. When the design and marketing groups of Nissan or Hyundai decide to change the specifications of a car’s interior and electronic systems, the changes must be communicated effectively to purchasing so that the vendor (often Lear Corporation) can begin changing the parts these important customers rely on to satisfy picky consumers in this market.

Stage Three: Search for and Qualification of Potential Suppliers

Once the organization has clearly defined the type of item needed, a search for potential suppliers begins. If the item has been purchased before, this search may be limited to one or a few suppliers that have performed satisfactorily in the past. (See the section later in this chapter on types of organizational buying situations.) From the seller’s perspective, one distinct advantage to cultivating strong long-term buyer relationships is that under such circumstances this step is often skipped. The buyer has enough familiarity and trust that it gives the favored seller the first opportunity to bid on supplying the new products. Historically, many automobile manufacturers have gone with single-source suppliers wherever possible to minimize the variation in quality of production inputs. This approach bodes well for Lear whenever a manufacturer announces spec changes on aspects of car models for which Lear supplies parts. If the purchase involves a new item, or if the item is complex and expensive (again, if the product represents a risky decision), organizational buyers often search for several potential suppliers and select the one with the best product and most favorable terms.

Stage Four: Acquisition and Analysis of Proposals or Bids

After potential suppliers are identified, the buyer may request proposals or bids from each. When the item is a frequently purchased, standardized, or technically simple product (for example, nails or copier paper), this process may not be very extensive. The buyer may simply consult several suppliers’ catalogs or make a few phone calls. For more complicated and expensive goods and services, the buyer may request lengthy, detailed sales presentations and written proposals from each potential vendor. Governmental and other institutional buyers almost always are required to formally solicit bids.

Stage Five: Evaluation of Proposals and Selection of Suppliers

During this stage of the purchasing process, members of the buying center examine the acceptability of the various proposals and potential suppliers. Also, the buying organization and one or more potential vendors may engage in negotiation about various aspects of the deal. Ultimately, one or more suppliers are selected and purchase agreements are signed.

The people in the buying organization’s purchasing department (the buyers) usually evaluate offerings and select the supplier. Others in the buying center, such as technical and administrative personnel, may also play a role in supplier selection, especially when the purchase is complex and costly.

What criteria do members of the buying center use in selecting a supplier? Organizational buying is largely a rational decision-making process, so rational criteria are usually most important—the value-added aspects of the product, the service offered, and the like. However, social and emotional factors can also influence this decision. Organizational buyers and other buying center members are, after all, human, just like buyers in the B2C marketplace. Some differences between consumer and organizational buyer behavior are summarized in Exhibit 2.6.

The relative importance of different supplier selection criteria varies across organizations and the types of products or services being purchased. For example, product quality tends to be more important in the purchase of technically complex products, whereas price and customer service are relatively more important for more standardized, nontechnical items or commodity products. Fortunately, a strong relationship between buyer and seller greatly increases the likelihood that buying firms will not use price as the sole determinant of vendor selection. Instead, because buyers will have much more complete knowledge about you and your products, they will better understand the overall value to their organization of buying from you versus one of your competitors with whom they do not have a long-standing relationship. Chapter 3 considers the issue of value creation in buyer–seller relationships in detail.

Stage Six: Selection of an Order Routine

Until the purchased item is delivered, it is of no use to the organization. Consequently, after an order is placed with a supplier, the purchasing department often tries to match delivery of the goods with the company’s need for the product. Other internal activities also must occur when the order is delivered. The goods must be received, inspected, paid for, and entered in the firm’s inventory records. These activities represent additional costs that may not be readily apparent to the buying firm. Retailers have become very aggressive in asking vendors to cover these costs by charging sales organizations slotting allowances, fees for the privilege of having the retailer set up a new item in its IT system, program it into inventory, and ultimately distribute the item to the stores. Slotting allowances can cost manufacturers thousands of dollars per new item stocked.

Stage Seven: Performance Evaluation and Feedback

When the goods have been delivered, evaluation by the customer begins. This evaluation focuses on both the product and the supplier’s service performance. This is a stage where follow-up by the salesperson is critically important. The goods are inspected to make sure they meet the specifications described in the purchase agreement. Later, users judge whether the purchased item performs according to expectations. The supplier’s performance can also be evaluated on such criteria as promptness of delivery, quality of the product, and service after the sale.

In many organizations, this evaluation is a formal process, involving written reports from the user department and other persons involved in the purchase. The purchasing department keeps the information for use in evaluating proposals and selecting suppliers the next time a similar purchase is made. Chapter 9 provides tips for sellers on successful ways to follow up after a sale.