Sales 1

Like many young men of my generation, once I left school, I totally lacked any idea what I wanted to do with my life.

There wasn't anything that really appealed to me and so I drifted into that "mecca of the unskilled," selling.  In fact I carried a bag for the next 40 years in one way or another.

In the UK, selling was a "profession," that was not generally respected although as everywhere else, everything we buy has at some stage to be sold.; if not in whole at least in part.

In order to cover up this slight distaste for job, a number of different nomenclatures were used for the term.  Area Representative, was popular; as too Sales Engineer, or even Area Manager, to avoid the nasty term altogether.

Of course, the type of product one represented was important in this ever difficult class conscious world.  Naturally if it was brushes door-to-door you were at the very bottom, whereas if it was heavy equipment or power stations, you were at the top.  I wandered into somewhere about the middle, although I did drop down a couple of times, and was rather bad at it.

It was my first trip to America that put a different spin on to it all, and a few months afterwards, I was given a lesson in understanding of the role of selling that made me sit up and take notice.  See next week.