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| *Ostroff, Fair and Company>>>Marketing & Sales |
Question a outside b2b Sales Representative..how hard is it? |
Dear all I just got a recruiter trying to get me an outside Businness to Business Sales position. I know I am out-going and enthusiastic. However, beside retail I have no outside Sales experience. (Also I had 1.5 years of Biology Lab Research experience in really good University). I want a good Sales Rep position with a good company. But the chances of my being able to get a job with a good company that assigns me a territory is hard. I worry I would end up working for a company that would have me do cold calls and establish new territory..that is really really hard. For one, if I do a bad job I might get fired. I would like a person who work in this field tell me about their experience. Thank you! I built my career life in sales and marketing and there is nothing crappy about it. I started as a floor salesman and rose to various management positions. All in all I would say it was an exciting career which took care of all our needs. Peace and blessings! In general, sales jobs are pretty crappy. If the product is perfect, the company knows it, and they charge a premium price. If the product is competitively priced, it's because it's a so-so product (or perhaps not even that good.) If it's a very good product at a highly competitive price, they just need an order-taker, not a salesman, and you get minimum wage income. When sales occur, your company will claim that it's because they have a great product and competitive pricing, denegrating you. There are a million reasons why sales don't happen. Maybe it's the wrong product for the customer. Maybe the customer simply doesn't have money to buy. Maybe you are wearing the wrong after-shave, and it reminds the customer of his good-for-nothing son-in-law. It doesn't matter why the sales don't happen, it is always YOUR fault. Everybody hates cold calls, because you almost never make sales the first time. Think about it. You've driven past lots of stores, every day, that you've never visited. One day, your car breaks down, and while waiting for AAA to show up, you happen to walk in the doors, and everything is store brand stuff. It looks like great merchandise and it looks like great prices. Do you drop your entire paycheck on those products? No. You may buy one or two products, to check them out, but probably, you decide to come back later, when you have more time, and you have a way to get the stuff home, and you know how much money it's going to cost to get your car fixed. You go back the next week, and you still don't blow your wad. You buy something non-critical. On your third trip, you buy more, and it's usually your fifth visit or more before you feel comfortable buying those private-brand products. Same way with cold calls. You're not trying to sell products. You're trying to make friends. After two or three calls, you're trying to get the customer to sample the product. It's only after five or more calls that the customer feels comfortable with both you and your products. And you can't do too much to speed that up. But if monthly calls make sense, you're talking about working for a half year in order to develop a customer. Meanwhile, your boss doesn't know whether you're making any headway or not. Maybe after four months of paying you and receiving virtually no sales, he fires you. The next guy has to start over, almost from scratch. You will lose customers over any given period of time. They die, they move away, their needs change. It's another place where the 80/20 rule applies. A salesman needs to spend 80% of his time caring for his existing customers, and 20% of his time developing new ones. Maybe that means you make cold calls on ten suspects every Friday morning, finding one or two prospects, and spend Friday afternoons developing your long list of prospects into customers. More than likely, the work will be interspersed with your other customers, because it's geographically better to do it that way. But you still have to develop new customers to replace old customers. I've been on both ends of this dynamic. It's miserable to be an outside salesman getting pressured by your boss. It's miserable to be a sales manager, trying to decide whether your salesmen are working hard and working effectively, or if they're just goofing off on the company payroll. And it's miserable to own a company that's not getting many sales, and you're trying to figure out whether it's your product, your prices, or your sales force. The play "Death of a Salesman" isn't too far off the mark. If you've never seen it, you really need to rent a copy. But while being a good salesman is incredibly difficult, making the big sale is incredibly exciting. It's like winning the superbowl. And because sales is incredibly difficult, good salesmen get paid a boatload of money. It's one of the highest-paid occupations in the world. But you didn't ask about how rewarding it can be. You asked how hard. For most people, it's incredibly hard. I've cold called a lot and we have reps that cold call at my current company. I don't consider it crappy, its relationship building and many make a great living doing it. I'd ask questions like how long other reps have been in their position, etc., what the sales cycle is for what you're going to sell, market penetration, who's the biggest competitor, etc in making the decision on working for a compand marketing a specific product. If you don't have the confidence to do this and think you won't be successful guess what, you won't be successful. If you can picture your success than go for it. I have been an export sales agent for about 30 years. I sell farm equipment and I travel world-wide. I love what I do. The job is very difficult but challenging and never boring. Nobody can tell you whether you will be successful or not, but from experience I can tell you that if you are determined and committed, chances are that you will be successful. If you are outgoing and like to meet new people, this could be the job for you. Remember that sales are the ultimate goal of any business and good sales people are very hard to find. If you have a prospect, see how willing these people are to train and support you. No matter how good you are or can become, you can never be successful if you do not have the full support of the company. Make sure that the company you want to work for is reliable, that the quality of their products is very good and, before you make any decision, see if you can talk to someone who has already been promoting their products. Good luck |
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