The Truth About Sales

My good friend Tim Rethlake always says, “Sales is the best paying hard job and the worst paying easy job” and it’s the truth. In our industry, it’s easy for installers or service techs to imagine that the life of a salesperson is full of wining and dining, sleeping in and doing the least amount of work possible—but that can’t be further from the truth.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in sales, you know that it’s the hardest job in the company—if done well.

Sales is the most unique and special job of any in your company, here’s why:

• If you work harder you get paid more (that’s not true for installers or office staff)
• Your job is recession proof (when was the last time that effective salespeople were laid off because of the economy?)
• You are the master of your own ship (it’s true, you decide what you make and when you will make it)

Think about each of those points and you’ll start to see the amazing blessing that you have been given to be in sales. 

So why do salespeople get a bad rap? Well, it’s because most don’t take their vocation seriously enough so they are annoying, ineffective, lazy (and broke). You see, sales isn’t about golf courses, expense reports and high profile client dinners. The truth is that being a sales whiz doesn’t take the skills that you may think, it just takes a radical commitment to the basics.

The basics are boring, mundane, difficult, and definitely not fun. But executing the basics over and over again will turn you into an amazing sales professional who makes an enormous amount of money, both for your company and yourself. 

Here is what you need to:

1. Follow up on every proposal at least seven times (try to do that within a three week period unless the customer tells you otherwise)
2. Establish a “next step” with every customer, every time (this could be writing a proposal, going out for an in-home appointment or getting their email address to send them a helpful article)
3. Be responsive when customers call you (answer your phone, always call them back by the end of the day and text them when you can’t take a call)
4. Track all of your estimates and sales (I can’t tell you how powerful this is to grow your skillset)

If you build a discipline of these four habits, you will make more money than you ever thought was possible for you—and you’ll have people banging on your door with job offers. The fact is that companies want salespeople who can execute the basics—and they will pay them for it! But don’t get me wrong, this means that you will work a lot of hours, you will have to radically time-block your day for effectiveness, and you might have to get up earlier than you want to.

It comes back to sales being the best paying hard job and the worst paying easy job—there’s simply no way around it. Just remember that you are working for yourself, your family and your future! Besides that, who feels good after a day of “easy work”? It’s hard work that gives us meaning and purpose—hard work applied to the right things that is. And what is better to apply hard work to than serving someone else and making their life better?

“You can have anything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want first.”

-Zig Ziglar