The future is bright for sales professionals ... and organizations with sales cultures

"Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them."

~ Ann Landers

If you're a job seeker that falls within "sales professional" looking for inspiration or motivation, you don't have to look far.   A recent post on Linked In by Forbes Contributing Writer George Anders article "Facebook's Hiring Surprise" http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140210021038-59549-facebook-s-hiring-surprise?trk=mp-details-rr-rmpost  forecasts a sunny future for those talented or leaning towards sales.  The enlightening article points out:

What Facebook craves these days is people who can sell.  Scan the listings on Facebook's careers page, and you'll find an impressive 170 or so openings in sales and business development.
There isn't a single technical department at Facebook that is as eager to hire. As of Feb. 9, Facebook was hunting for 97 more software engineers, another 78 infrastructure specialists, and 51 data/analytics experts. Yes, fast-growing Facebook has some openings in every section. But the demand for extra people is most intense in the time-tested world of sales.... (The exact total fluctuates slightly, day by day.) The reason: Facebook's money engine is built on advertising. Even in the highly automated world of online marketing, it turns out that making deals come together still requires a human touch.

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”

~Milton Berle

Brilliant!  many would say.  I say:  something so obvious to me, shouldn't be a surprise.   ALL organizations, regardless of whether they are technology driven, retail/consumer, travel, etc. should be customer or oriented which translates into selling: 

1. Asks questions about their customers business.
2. Listens carefully to what their customers are saying.
3. Communicating those needs to the people in the organization that can make things happen.
4. Look for ways to improve their service to the customers, to strengthen relationship,
5. Show customers how they can remove headaches, streamline processes,
6. Can concisely show how that one widget or service can improve on overall costs

Organizations that are hit with a bolt of lightening that they need sales efforts may just beginning to heed B2B (Business to Business) organizations who consider every individual in their organization a sales person from the CEO who promotes the organization and what they are doing innovatively and better than anyone else, to the Chief of Finance who works financial magic on keeping costs in check while being wizards at making their offering affordable, to Marketing Gurus who maintain consistent communication across all material, social media and web platforms.  The organization mechanism churns briskly to ensure customers have the best experiences possible.

Organizations that pull together and are often recognized as being one of the "best employers" to work for because they perform as a team, one division not better or smarter or more important than the other.  The big winners are those that agree and enforce the culture that they are customer oriented and sales is a focus -- demonstrated by key words:  drive revenue, improved satisfaction, customer retention, repeat consumers, brand loyalty, customer focussed, employee expertise.  They leave the things that drive employees crazy at the board room table:  increase profitability, cost recovery, shareholder value, loss, pending layoffs.  Employees and new hires are trusting that the executive team takes care of them at the board room table while holding their middle managers accountable on all the metrics surrounding profitability, cost controls, employee turnover.

So why would Facebook suddenly start showing an obvious concentration of hiring sales professionals?  It seems clear to someone like me who started a sales career selling advertising for magazines where costs were covered by ad revenue, not subscription sales.  It would appear that the ads on Facebook are not covering the cost of operations.  Going public with a share offering would substantiate that revenue was not covering its growth.

Let's face it:  sales tend to drive revenue and capture new business which means it creates jobs to service the customers.   Often creating sales positions is a Band-Aid especially when it is used to jumpstart a business' revenue or as a stop gap to losing profits.  Sadly, sales professionals are given budgets to attain and used as a measuring stick to their overall contribution.  A clear signal is when their is a lot of turnover in the sales arena.  Turnover in sales hurts both the customers and the organization who hasn't drawn out a clear organizational chart and where accountabilities lay.   It costs money to cultivate customers, and too often looked at from a transactional perspective rather than strengthening relationships with customers.

More importantly, sales should be considered the "voice" of the customer to the organization, not just an individual selling a gadget or a one-off service. Transactional sales are a thing of the past, relationships are where it's at and sales professionals have a vested interested in maintaining relationships (think: referrals, growth opportunities of customers, problem solving) and those who have a job created because of a growth in customer base should pay attention to that communication ... or be proactively communicating what they discover as a need for the customer that the organization can solve.  The organizations that will survive and thrive don't just hire experienced sales professionals and throw them out on to the streets. 

Winners will provide continual training, reinforce excellence by recognition, attract top talent and reward those demonstrate going the extra mile to improve customer experience, track costs effectively.

There are optimization tools like CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) systems in place to effectively capture communications across all sectors from front line service personnel, customer service, operations -- not just the sales team.  The CRMs can create dashboards for close examination on performance.  However, rather than just microscope the sales efforts, examine which customers are the best ones (less complaints, pay on time, easy to service, profitability based on service needs, will collaborate on increased costs with meeting increased services).

Once you can create the ideal customer based on current profiles, interview those clients to find out what they REALLY think about their sales professional, customer service, service technicians, accounting practices, financial details, and the organization's brand. 

Take that perfect customer profile and collaborate amongst all divisions and ask what they can do to go the extra mile to ensure that they can keep that high level of satisfaction.

Ask marketing to research what avenues are the best to attract those same customers ... instead of haphazard ad campaigns that appeal to the masses, be more selective and narrow in on to programs that solidify those relationships via social media, loyalty rewards, referral rewards, personalized promotions that draw out revenue in a less painful and expensive manner.


Make it easy for your customers to do business with you!  Don't allow service, technical, or finance stonewall the customer.   I've experienced organizations that operate in small silos within large frames  that makes the weight of the relationship responsibility fall where it is less manned to keep costs in check.  Ultimately, that can lead to employee turnover and create a gap.  Customers themselves are being asked to do more with less and frequently less patient with those they pay for a service to.  Don't ask your employees to shoulder the blame and where the customer is asked to be compassionate.  They will have even less patience when they're tasked with training the replacement employee who has been thrown in with little onboarding, job shadowing or training. 

It is wise to keep corporate communications and culture private.   Who really likes to air dirty laundry or expose skeletons?  Usually disgruntled people.  In other words, don't allow employees find out the health of the organization through the media or via shareholders' displeasure.  Be upfront, create a team with a "we" attitude that everyone has a stake in the health of the organization.  You may end up surprised how many talented people you have on board who take pride in who they work for and may have ideas that can contribute to the success.  Don't leave it on one area's shoulders, like sales.   Create a culture of pride where employees are not whining to customers about cutbacks as excuses to why they aren’t getting the service or product or company they bought into.  Sales job is much easier when there is a strong brand, solid financial future, and positive media translated by customer cheerleaders.   The organization will win when both customers and employees are lined up at the door.  Shareholders will naturally gravitate to healthy organization because information is readily available and travels fast.

"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."

~Thomas Edison