How important is sales?
Blog #22
Carl points out how promoting yourself can make a tremendous difference to your career!
I am a salesman, have always been a salesman, and will stride to continue forward as a salesman. This is my view on survival and it has helped my grow professionally since day one. I'm a great believer that selling is the number one marketing tool available to mankind. If it is cultivated during life then there really isn't any boundaries that can't be broken!
I go back to leaving school. I couldn't wait to become an adult, so the very idea of getting a job made sense, having my own spending money meant I could buy things I'd only dreamed about, and the overall package looked stimulating. I wasn't the straight A kid, nor was I a student who enjoyed classes, but I did pick up enough common sense and survival skills from my parents and Carshalton High School for boys to provide some sort of service to others. Most already know I failed all my exams. My dad used to head a platoon in the territorial army that fortunately gave me a good sense of discipline, so I was organized although you would never think so with my school record!
So when my dad suggested applying for jobs six months before leaving school at age sixteen it made sense to go ahead and offer my services as an office clerk, which he felt would be the best route to follow. He never asked me what I wanted, not that I had even thought much about it, but he advised me that a labor job would be tough as I became older. My dad worked hard all his working life and at that time ran a printing workshop with some forty employees, so he knew enough about business to gain my confidence and trust in his judgment.
After writing to twenty banks, insurance companies, and building societies (English high street savings stores), I was invited to an interview, and without realizing it I had done enough to win the interviewers belief in my ability (my first sale), so the rest was history. I was invited to work at the insurance company as soon as my studies were completed, but it rested on my exam results and five GSEs (roughly equivalent to high school diploma). Anyway, I began in the summer, and when I received the results a couple of months later made all attempts to avoid the Human Resource department not to run the risk of being asked to leave for failing all my exams. I ended up spending five years in the Property Management department and learned much about administration, which later helped in my career when running my own companies!
One way to put it is having a good command of logical processes together with ledger control (accounts), and a chance to see an operation gave me the insight to develop my career later in life. In this case it clarifies academic qualifications aren't the end all to one's career, but certainly the same goes for those students who study a process til the end; it supplies the necessary grounding to get results.
It was over thirty years ago and since then many things have changed dramatically like higher standards required to get job placement. All in all the competition is getting tougher, so those who choose to excel get the best jobs.
As far as sales go, the first step is work on yourself, and then it is easy to effectively sell oneself. In my future blogs I'll go into more detail about how sales can take you from survival mode to huge profitability.
Stayed tuned!
MAIN SITE
Carl points out how promoting yourself can make a tremendous difference to your career!
I am a salesman, have always been a salesman, and will stride to continue forward as a salesman. This is my view on survival and it has helped my grow professionally since day one. I'm a great believer that selling is the number one marketing tool available to mankind. If it is cultivated during life then there really isn't any boundaries that can't be broken!
I go back to leaving school. I couldn't wait to become an adult, so the very idea of getting a job made sense, having my own spending money meant I could buy things I'd only dreamed about, and the overall package looked stimulating. I wasn't the straight A kid, nor was I a student who enjoyed classes, but I did pick up enough common sense and survival skills from my parents and Carshalton High School for boys to provide some sort of service to others. Most already know I failed all my exams. My dad used to head a platoon in the territorial army that fortunately gave me a good sense of discipline, so I was organized although you would never think so with my school record!
So when my dad suggested applying for jobs six months before leaving school at age sixteen it made sense to go ahead and offer my services as an office clerk, which he felt would be the best route to follow. He never asked me what I wanted, not that I had even thought much about it, but he advised me that a labor job would be tough as I became older. My dad worked hard all his working life and at that time ran a printing workshop with some forty employees, so he knew enough about business to gain my confidence and trust in his judgment.
After writing to twenty banks, insurance companies, and building societies (English high street savings stores), I was invited to an interview, and without realizing it I had done enough to win the interviewers belief in my ability (my first sale), so the rest was history. I was invited to work at the insurance company as soon as my studies were completed, but it rested on my exam results and five GSEs (roughly equivalent to high school diploma). Anyway, I began in the summer, and when I received the results a couple of months later made all attempts to avoid the Human Resource department not to run the risk of being asked to leave for failing all my exams. I ended up spending five years in the Property Management department and learned much about administration, which later helped in my career when running my own companies!
One way to put it is having a good command of logical processes together with ledger control (accounts), and a chance to see an operation gave me the insight to develop my career later in life. In this case it clarifies academic qualifications aren't the end all to one's career, but certainly the same goes for those students who study a process til the end; it supplies the necessary grounding to get results.
It was over thirty years ago and since then many things have changed dramatically like higher standards required to get job placement. All in all the competition is getting tougher, so those who choose to excel get the best jobs.
As far as sales go, the first step is work on yourself, and then it is easy to effectively sell oneself. In my future blogs I'll go into more detail about how sales can take you from survival mode to huge profitability.
Stayed tuned!
MAIN SITE
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