Sales is wild. I could write and talk about sales for days. I even help facilitate a sales “group therapy” community called Broker Brews.
I heard one-time middle children have no natural authority. They’re not the youngest, cutest, or the oldest strongest. This may be why I love making deals. I won’t bore you with the child lobbying or “jobs” my parents helped us get to earn cash. I will say helping run the Troy High School snack bar while my brother played and Dad ran the booster club was a lot of great money handling and people interacting at a young age.
I digress. Sales is also funny because oftentimes you have to keep us away from the rest of the staff. Sales “outposts” are common for a few reasons. If your Accounting people or department acted like your sales department you’d be concerned.
In sales you have to open doors, bring people along, get internal buy-in, external buy-in, and either lobby your cause or wait for it to be the right move for the company. The salesperson’s gotta keep an eye on compensation and lobby for what is fair too, it’s a wild world. And ownership wants to help the salesperson, but they also don’t want them to run off with the lifeblood of their kingdom, accounts and deal flow.
In sales, we’re often under-educated, potentially under-connected, underslept, and we’re on a bit of an island compared to most regular jobs, and that’s ok. We’re rewarded handsomely and probably wouldn’t fit with the rank and file. Please be nice to the salespeople in your life, they’re supporting their company, family, and hopefully a nice car lease because they’re a badass.
PS: Try and make SDR to Account Manager convo handoffs less weird. And is your LinkedIn bot working if you have to SPAM 1,000 people to get one convo? Know who you’re talking to and why, please.
