Looking for a Career in Outside Sales?

Part of manufacturing is outside sales. An outside salesperson is simply someone who works outside of an office " in the field" to find buyers for a product.

Outside sales can be a very lucrative job simply because most people don't want to do it. On the job, you often have to talk to strangers on your own initiative. There are often barriers placed in your way to keep you from even talking to the people who are supposed to talk to you. It involves rejection. It takes a special kind of person.

So what are the key elements for success in outside sales:

• You must look the part in sales. A suit may not be needed in tractor sales, but it's a must in other sales jobs. Sometimes you need power point sales, often it's just you and the customer laughing over a doughnut.

• You must be motivated as you'll work mostly without supervision. You may have to do your own bookkeeping for expenses. Also, selling involves face time. It takes twenty sales calls on average for one sale. This also means discernment. Are you wasting your time and resources trying to get an account? Does the account justify your time and resources?

• You need to believe in the product you sell. The playwright Neil Simon once said that when writing a play, the audience has to care about the characters. Otherwise, you can write a brilliant joke a minute, and the audience won't laugh.

• A good company doesn't offer you get rich schemes or sales without pain, though you may be working on commission with no salary, especially in the beginning.

• You need a thorough knowledge in the field of what you're selling. This doesn't mean you have to know how to build the product, but obviously if you don't know how the product works or the problems of your customer that it solves, then you can't sell the product.

• You are selling yourself in sales. This is because the bond you develop with a customer is essential to sales. Fortunately, in all sales relationships I've seen, this bond is also very real.

• It is good that this bond is real because there's a saying that everyone has steak, it's the sizzle you sell. Sometimes though, a competitor's product comes out that really doesn't only have more sizzles, it turns your steak into hot dogs. It's the bond that you develop with a customer which keeps him or her with you while you try to find an alternative product.

• You need to be sensitive to your customer's needs. And don't take your customer for granted. You can destroy a relationship that has even turned into a friendship overnight if you don't care about what your customer actually wants and needs. Every customer you will have probably had an outside salesperson before you that forgot this lesson.

• Honesty, politeness, and forbearance are important. Today's crabby person may be tomorrow's customer.

• You have to be able to close a sale, in other words, ask the customer to buy. And no customer is a customer until they start buying. That doesn't mean you force a sale, but you also have to keep in mind that time is money, and people who don't buy are keeping you from people who do.

This list is not exhaustive, which is good because neither should sales be exhausting for your clients. So get in, politely get out. And stop talking when they are placing an order. You can talk yourself out of a sale.

By

Jeffrey Ruzicka

Jeffrey Ruzicka is a retired executive of a small company which specializes in industrial water treatment. He lives happily with his wife in Western Pennsylvania. He is a contributing writer to ManufacturingWorkers, ManufacturingWorkersBlog and Nexxt.