There’s a persistent perception that sales is a “last resort” job. I don’t know where it comes from, but I get angry when I hear people say, “I’m just a sales rep.” When you choose a sales career, you are not settling for a second-rate job.
Selling is challenging and you should be proud of your job. What you may not have thought of, however, is that sales experience is vitally important if you ever hope to have an executive level job.
Surprised? When I work with professionals near the top of their non-sales careers and eager to move to the C-Suite, they often lack sales experience.
You may think:
“What does selling have to do with being a COO or Division Vice President?”
“Why would the head of finance or a business unit need sales experience?”
It does not matter what role you have. If you are an executive, you are going to have customer-facing responsibilities, and there’s no better place than sales to learn how to interact effectively with customers. You may be called on to help resolve customer satisfaction issues or to participate in important sales calls. You may need to speak at customer events. Yes, even COOs.
As a key representative of your company, you’ll be expected to interface with your counterparts at other companies, where you’ll need to be conversant in your company’s offerings and why people need them.
Again, sales is the best place to develop this knowledge, because you hear directly from customers why they like what you sell.
Even if you didn’t need customer-facing skills, you’d still need a thorough understanding of sales. Why?
Because sales is the lifeblood of business – Any company exists to sell something.
As a leader in your company, you need to be able to enter into discussions and decisions about top markets, top sellers, and sales strategies. If you do not understand what’s going on in your sales organization, you don’t understand what’s going on in your business.
It’s that simple.
