I am a Salesperson

Firestorm · Mar 14, 2019
When you make the decision to start a business, it is usually because you love doing something, you are good at it, and you see a need in the market that you have the ability to fill. Most people don't start a business because they love to sell, and yet, that is precisely what you must do to stay in business and continue to do what it is that you love. I think sales and salespeople get a bad rap. At the heart of it, sales is about finding and filling a need. So today I wanted to share this. This appeared in Zig Ziglar's book Secrets to Closing the Sale. Although the references are dated, the spirit of the piece is timeless.

I AM A SALESPERSON


I am proud to be in sales because more than any other person I, and millions of others like me, built America.


The person who builds a better mousetrap or a better anything would starve to death if he waited for people to beat a pathway to his door. Regardless of how good or how needed the product or service might be it has to be sold.

Eli Whitney was laughed at when he showed the cotton gin.

Edison had to install his electric light free of charge in an office building before anyone would even look at it.

The first sewing machine was smashed to pieces by a Boston mob.

People scoffed at the idea of railroads: they thought that even traveling 30 mph would stop the circulation of the blood.

McCormick strived for 14 years to get people to use his reaper.

Westinghouse was considered a fool for stating that he could stop a train with wind. Morse had to plead before 10 Congresses before they would even look at his telegraph.

The public didn't go around demanding these things: they had to be sold.

They needed thousand of salespeople, trailblazers, pioneers, and people who could persuade the same effectiveness as the inventor could invent. Salespeople took these inventions, sold the public on what these products could do, taught customers how to use them, and then taught businessmen how to make a profit from them.

As a salesperson I've done more to make America what it is today than any other person you know. I was just as vital in your great-great-grandfather's day as I am yours, and I'll be just a vital in your great-great-grandson's day. I have educated more people , created more jobs, taken more drudgery from the laborer's work, given more profits to businessmen, and have given more people a fuller and richer life than anyone in the history. I've dragged prices down, pushed quality up, and made it possible for you to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of automobiles, radios, electric refrigerators, televisions, and air conditioned homes and buildings. I've healed the sick, given security to the aged, and put thousand of young men and women through college. I've made it possible for inventors to invent, for factories to hum, and ships to sail the seven seas.

How much money you will find in your pay envelope next week, and whether in the future you will enjoy the luxuries of pre-fabricated homes, stratospheric flying airplanes, and a new world of jet propulsion and atomic power, depends on me. The loaf of bread that you bought today was on a baker's shelf because I made sure the farmer's wheat got to the mill, that the mill made the wheat into flour, and that the flour was delivered to your baker.


Without me, the wheels of industry would come to a grinding halt. And with that, jobs, marriages, politics, and freedom of thought would be as thing of the past.


I AM A SALESPERSON and I'm both proud and grateful that as such I serve my family, my fellow neighbor, and my country.    


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