- Share This Post
- 0
- submit
- 8
-
Sparkle (0)
There was a time when the worst thing you could ever call me was a salesperson. The word connoted dishonesty, opportunism. Salespeople tried to foist things on you that you didn't necessarily want. 
Non-salespeople love to demonize salespeople as shallow and money hungry. Sure, salespeople tend to be paid better than "cost center" employees; Kris Dunn of Fistful of Talent explains why:
Let's face it - Sales Pros are the ones who bring home the bacon, so everyone else can fry it up in the pan. They're the hunters, you're the farmer. They start from a scoreboard that says "0" every month, while we're still trying to figure out what a scoreboard looks like for most positions in the organization. ... Guess what? The market pays for those who drag the carcass home to the tribe.
I started my career on the opposite end of sales, broke and self-righteous in print editorial, where content and commerce (advertising) could co-exist but never comingle. As an editor, I recall cordial but guarded meetings with my company's salespeople, sharing content concepts they could sell for sponsorship, but never could they try to influence the content. Content was sacred. And those salespeople, while perfectly nice creatures, needed to be slapped on the wrist lest they muck up the product with branded filth.
And then I became a salesperson.
It was a gradual process; at first I merely helped salespeople develop compelling concepts that tied into content, but when the flagging online startup I was working for desperately needed revenue, sales became my job. In order for me to stay employed during the internet bust I had to sell, and I was good at it.
I now have a totally different take on salespeople. I respect them, much like I respect soldiers on the front line of battle. They put themselves out there so that the creatives/producers can live freely in a democratic society (wait, I'm mixing metaphors).
Seriously, though, selling provided me with a skillset as fundamental to my career as basic math. After I moved back into more creative pursuits I found that my stints as a salesperson made me exponentially better at getting my work noticed. And yes, better at getting paid.
I still believe that good content cannot be influenced by commerce, and creators still need to draw a line between selling their work and selling out, but selling one's work or oneself is not an act of treason. Sales instincts are not hard to hone; so many of us have them without realizing it. But we stop ourselves short of selling because, I believe, of our biases around it. By re-casting our frame of reference around selling, whole worlds open up. Consider the following:
Creative work is sales work: I think it's fitting of the times that advertising and marketing behemoth Ogilvy is sponsoring a contest through its OgilvyOne Worldwide group in search of the greatest salesperson.
Says Rory Sutherland, vice chairman for the British operations of Ogilvy & Mather in The New York Times:
“There’s an interesting case to be made that advertising has strayed too far from the business of salesmanship,” which is unfortunate because it can be “a good test of how well you understand people and your creativity.”
The contest requires entrants to submit to the agency's YouTube channel their two-minute pitch of a red brick--the rationale being if you can sell a red brick you can sell anything. The winner will win a three-month fellowship at Ogilvy.
One could argue that Ogilvy is getting some cheap sales help in a pinch. I would argue that this agency--known for it's creative work and strategy building--is acknowledging the critical importance of sales as a necessary component of creativity. Good ideas don't sell themselves. Someone has to present--or sell--them well.
Good sellers are really experts in value: Some of the best salespeople I've encountered don't actually sell; they spot value where others don't. As someone who has worked online much of her career, I've seen sellers who notice traffic trends, find the most resonating conversations online, and then figure out ways to package this information in ways that are valuable to others.
Solopreneurs or bloggers can do the same by looking at their sites/businesses and seeing where value already lies, not just what others will pay them to build. Why are people coming to your
