In the beginning, this is what I wanted to do for a living.
No, not sell or manage. Write.
As a kid, I loved reading and writing. In high school, I was an editor on the school newspaper. In college, I wrote for the school newspaper as well. My friends even nicknamed me, “Scoop.”
One of my first jobs after college was writing reports on the real estate market in different cities. It combined two of my passions at the time, urban affairs and writing, and I was loving it. Until Black Monday, October 19, 1987. The stock market crashed big-time that day, and many of the full subscribers to the service I wrote for indicated they would be canceling their subscriptions. The owners let go of most of us right before Christmas, and I found myself without a job only a few weeks after getting married.
In the beginning, I had no idea I would have a 30 year (and counting!) career in sales. Heck, I didn’t know what sales was. I had read “Death of a Salesman” and seen the play, and I surely didn’t want to end up like Willy Loman. When the company I was writing for announced the layoffs, someone suggested I go back and offer to sell for them to keep my foot in the door. Honestly, I didn’t even know what “sell for them” meant.
But now I do know, and I want to share my thoughts on sales, sales development, sales management, and assorted other topics.
Thanks for joining me on the ride. More to come tomorrow.
Scoop on Sales 