Have you once thought of this question? What’s your idea about SALES?

If your first thought is that sales is an commercial behavior about selling out products, it’s normal and right, but superficial. As the time passes, if you keep the same situation, you will end your life as a common, exhausted salesman.

       If you can be in the position of sales force leader, you are at a higher level. Then what’s the essence of sales force leader? HBR gave its answer “ selling the sales force outside the company”!

       I think it is very classical and grabs the core of selling management.

From the stories of successful sales managers, we can define the successful sales leaders are those who offered inspiration, enthusiasm, and an effective sales message to their soldiers. Admittedly, selling the sales fore-motivating it by giving it a clear mission-often proved tougher than selling a single tangible product.

       Harvard researched a famous sales force training master----John H. Patterson, and concluded his treasured principles of success. Patterson was ahead of his time----I think it is still alive nowadays---- in realizing that the key to salesmanship was not in selling visible things, which I said above is just superficial and very basic----whether they were books, lighting rods, or cash registers----but in selling solutions! On the contrary, the least effective salesman were those who felt they had nothing practical to offer to customers or who felt they had to rely on personality to end a sales.

       Patterson stimulated his salesman by giving them high rate commission, and those who finished the tasks would enjoy all-expenses-paid trips. He urged his salesman to wear good suits and to say in the best hotels, and he lectured them on health and manners. Surely, he gave them solid training in the use of the products. And he used other tricks which could arouse his salesman’s deeply-hidden enthusiasms inside, such as inviting their wives to be present at the training spot and welcomed the wives to thing of ways to help their husbands.

       He was fanatical and autocratic, and he kept firing his best sales force, when they were becoming powerful enough. We can judge whether it is lucky or unlucky for him or the fired ones, but this fire did bring tremendous influence to the commerce! A remarkable number of the fired men became leader of other concerns, one of them is IBM.

    Times have changed, but just as 天下无贼said what is the most valuable treasure in 21st century? Intelligence! The leaders who know how to inspire are no less crucial to sales team today! Nowadays, as competition is becoming increasingly fierce, it is hard to distinguish from competitors’ product, or the sales message is murky, exhortations won’t help much, we are encountering a dilemma, then we can turn back to Patterson’s method: teach recruits effective arguments and work with veterans to keep sales messages current. And the next step is to selling the sales force with every thing we got.