Sales- A laboratory to Human Nature

Sales is like an art and artists (they may be rogues, charlatan, dream makers, seducers etc.) do their best when they are left alone with less supervision. A sales review meeting, once in a week, backed by metrics is good enough to keep action plan in track.

As far as Salesperson is concerned, they possess different skills and work with different motives on the field. Sales person can be charmers, eager to win with everyone that they meet.

The underlying principle here is aligning core activity to right skills of a person. 

There are salesperson, who hunts and are good in closing sales quickly and frequently, These people are generally good for transactional sales, products and services with shorter life cycle

There are salesperson who are good at building relationships, doing iterative meetings with clients. These people are good at selling services and products with a longer life cycle.

Some sales person are incentives driven. They cannot do sales until and unless lured by powerful incentive schemes and there are still others who does it for pure thrill of it.

Some excerpts from HBR and there are interesting insights in each of them:-

1. I am looking for people who can make others comfortable, who are spontaneous, who are are articulate, and who are able to deal with the unexpected.-Steve Jobs

2. "I have people who work with me who know everything about sales, but they still couldn't sell," he said. "They don't have what it takes. And then I've watched kids on YouTube who make fake infomercials and they're getting millions of views" - Selling is an art it comes with intelligence, practice and belief

3."You are like a beggar in sales, asking again and again all day," he said. "The salesman should  loose robes. You never get upset. Of course, sometimes you have customers and you want to kill them. But you're not allowed to."- Customer is the Boss

4. "Managing, or hiring a sales force is to understand dynamics among personality, self-perception, and role. Identify the conflicts so that selling feels as normal and natural as it should.- Philip Delves 

In the end, what enables a sales personnel to succeed is the ideal balance between who is he? and what he is being required to do?