The Role of the Seller

The most wonderful aspect of sales is that if you are a great seller, like a profound artist or uniquely qualified surgeon, there’s always work for you. There’s also always an itch – to achieve, to be relevant, to get that taste of success again and again.

Sales is a sport filled with winners and losers, workers and hustlers, honorable and cheats. Each segment or industry is its own playing field, rich with lingo and best practices and its own nuances. Master your playing field – the things that get you paid and noticed – and you can dominate your field. Sales excellence is not about excellent sales – it’s about becoming a student of the game and understanding how it works. It’s about relationships. It’s about adding value. It’s about odds, probability and consistency.

But it does not always transfer. A great seller does not a great manager make. Someone who thrives in health care sales cannot necessarily move into technology or cars or retail. It takes the rarest of rare – the unicorn of sales (or, perhaps more appropriately, the chameleon) – to transform into the successful seller of every solution.

You must really care about your brand to continue to adapt with every change thrown your way. But we’ve got work to do and money to make. A real seller’s job is never done.