That’s a question I used to ask myself a lot. I started out as a Software Engineer and considered myself to be good at it, all the while considering myself to be the one adding revenue to the company I was a part of. It’s only later that I realized it was far from the truth.
In today’s day and age, the fact is, that there are very few students, who during their college years have a goal to be salesperson. Do a quick survey around you, and you’ll understand what I mean. For a young guy/gal getting out of college it’s always something ‘lofty’: architecture, technology, business, medicine etc. etc. What many fail to realize is that once you are into the job (I say ‘job’, because a lot of the folks getting out of the college will get into a job rather than become an entrepreneur straight away) there are different roles you’ll take on as per the company’s direction. For example let’s pick a technology organization. When you are in a tech company, you don’t automatically start coding. Surprised? In fact if I have to break it to you, more than half the people in a typical IT (information technology) do not even code. There are functions within a company which entails a person to be a:
Business analyst (the one who translates the requirement from a customer into logic and design)
Design architect (who creates the project architecture – which function within the program talks to which other component)
Tester (who makes sure that the program that has been written meets quality standards and does what its supposed to do)
Production engineer (who ensures that the program is deployed and is working smoothly in the production environment)
Support engineer (who maintains and rectifies any problem that arises with the program after it’s in production)
That’s apart from the people from support functions such as finance, legal, compliance, marketing etc.
Well of course there is a coder in there too, who writes the program/software code, but you see that for a project to run smoothly there are multiple people on the team. But how is all this relevant to the topic of Sales? That’s the thing, if there is no salesperson involved, the team that I listed above will cease to exist. That’s right!
So for the above project to even start, the project has to be awarded to this technology company. And who enables that? You are right: A Salesperson!
You see, if you have to be in a company, or to put it bluntly, if you plan to be in an organization for long, you have to be either of the two: bring money into the company or save money for the company. It’s just these two things that’ll ensure that you continue to stay on. And obviously if you are the former, one who brings in money to the company, you are considered to have the upper hand. So you guessed it right, a salesperson has one of the most important roles to perform in a company. Because if the sales dry up, the company will soon be out of business.
In the beginning of the article, I mentioned about the college student getting into a job as an employee. Well if the goal is to start running a business straightaway, the role of a salesperson becomes even more critical then. In an established company, you can figure out your strengths to get into the right kind of role and you’ll even have the luxury of time to do that. But in an entrepreneurial venture, that luxury is missing. You have to start getting sales right away in a bid to survive.
Role of a Salesperson: While we discussed the importance of a salesperson, it’s important to note that a lot of the successful sales folks are a jack of all trades. Going back to the example of the project team that was listed above. In a large organization there are specific teams entrusted with a specific function, but quite often in a real time scenario or a small company where these teams are missing, it’s the salesperson who fulfills most of these roles. Many a times, you’ll find that the sales person has to be good at marketing, to get the customers to be interested in working with you; finance, to size the project and make sure that it’s profitable; technology, to explain the functionality and the ways the project will be beneficial to the customer etc. With an exposure into the various facets of an organization early on in their careers, you’ll notice that most of the people who have made it to the top have been very successful in sales too.
Hopefully this blog has put light on the importance of sales in an organization and more importantly the role it plays in shaping your career. There is also a facet which I’ll deal in a later blog post, but is worth mentioning here: AI. With the advent of Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, there are a lot of jobs that are slowly but surely going to be done by a machine, which also means that careers which don’t involve human emotions, interactions and skills will be missing from the job listings very soon. Sales is one role that for most part is immune to that scenario. Another reason it should definitely be on top of your mind while considering a profession.
