According to a recent survey on average salaries across a range of professions, I noted that both doctors and accountants who are employed rather than running their own practices, earn an average salary of around £45,000 to £50,000 a year. In both cases, becoming qualified means earning a university degree and then many more years of training and study. In complete contrast, it is possible to get a position in sales with very few qualifications, not a great deal of experience – especially if it is a commission only sales position, and by learning to sell and really applying oneself, earn a similar if not considerably higher income.
Why is this?
It’s not because selling is especially hard work. In fact most doctors and accountants I know work an awful lot harder than most salespeople I know. So why do we get paid so much? Obviously it is for making sales and the more sales we make, the more we usually earn. But in my opinion, that is not all we get paid for and in fact making sales is secondary to what I believe we really get paid for, which is ….
BEING REJECTED – and sometimes even ejected!
There is no other profession I can think of (and yes selling is a profession), where someone is likely to be rejected so frequently. We get paid because we can handle the NOs that most people could not handle whilst we are working our way to the YES!
Here is an example to illustrate and prove my point – to my satisfaction anyway…
I’m organizing and presenting a Sales Master Class in December in Canada.
Gunther is a telesales person I use from time to time to sell tickets to the master classes for me. The following figures are taken from his call log over the fifteen days he worked on the campaign:
He made 900 cold calls
688 of these were blocked by a ‘gatekeeper’ – NOs
9 decision makers were rude to him and hung up – NOs
154 listened to his presentation, answered his questions but declined to purchase any tickets. More NOs
49 bought a total of 97 tickets between them.
Gunther earned £5,500 in commission. YES!
Of course just about anyone would come into the office first thing in the morning and happily make 49 calls one after the other if they knew for sure they would make 97 sales straight off.
And you could argue that Gunther got paid for making the sales.
I would argue that Gunther got paid for being able to handle the NOs – and in fact got paid £6.46 each time someone said NO to him.
If you want to learn more professional selling skills, reduce the number of NOs and get more of the YES – check out my sales coaching books, CDs, MP3s and DVDs here: http://www.bruceking.co.uk/sales-training-products/
My next ‘Open to all’ Sales Master Class OR get the home study program…
My next one-day Sales Master Class takes place on January 15 2014 at Heathrow. For full details of the content, ongoing one to one support and double your sales guarantee, go to http://www.bruceking.co.uk/sales-master-classes. Early booking is recommended to avoid disappointment.
If you need a sales boost fast and cannot wait until January, or the date / location is not convenient, you can get the entire one – day program on DVDs + Course Manual AND the ongoing support and guarantee. Further details at the footer of the above web page.
Have a great day – every day!
Bruce