Every single one of the hundreds of sales people I’ve had conversations with over the past few years will point out that they’re not like everyone else. They need to sell something they believe in, offer it to clients in a morally defensible way, and through that have a positive impact on their clients organisation.

In addition, when we work with Sales Professionals we offer them that they gain additional insight into their own personality and the way they solve problems and tasks. We do that by letting them take the excellent Human Developers personality assessments. Part of what comes out in these tests and subsequantial conversations about the results, is that Sales Professionals more often than not score high on doing the morally right thing.

Conclusion: Everything generally said about Sales Professionals is incorrect!!

I know, but think about for a second:

Really? But wait – there’s more…

The way organisations buy is changing rapidly. As a consequence to mirror potential clients’ decision making process, sales too needs to change. It’s been a loooong time coming, but it appears that the old way of selling is about to be gone for good.

Recently I spent some time with the brains behind Winning by Design, and in an inspiring presentation founder Jacco vanderKooij shared this excellent overview of the old and the new way of selling:

In any trade (and sales is clearly a trade), you can’t just be motivated by your own financial outcome. If you want to do anything for the rest of your life, you must enjoy doing the tasks your trade involves.

If you look at the rough overview of tasks required in sales you’ll find that it’s a list of activities which begin and end with an intent to help organisations and individuals make decisions that are good for them. Sales Professionals who can’t do that won’t be able to hack it in the new world of sales.

And so, suddenly, the Sales Professional isn’t a vulture. Instead you rely on Sales Professionals to be Decision Consultants who assist organisations in doing root cause analysis, making sense of the solution options, and aiding the go or no-go decision.