Everyone is in Sales

I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don't hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales. Zig Ziglar

Hi Everyone,

I spent twelve years at Nordstrom and held a lot of jobs. I started on the sales floor. I wrapped gifts during the holidays. I worked the switchboard, the old plug board kind, routing every call coming in and going out of the store.

The switchboard had nothing to do with selling clothes. I wasn’t ringing a register. I wasn’t styling anyone or building a display. I was answering a phone.

But I was the first voice most customers heard. Before they walked through the door. Before they met a salesperson. Me. The way I picked up that phone decided whether they felt welcome or in the way. Whether they bothered to come in. Whether they told a friend about us, or warned them off.

That is selling. It just doesn’t look like selling.

The receptionist sells. The developer sells. The person who answers the support ticket sells. The person who writes the invoice sells. Every interaction either earns the next one or burns it.

If your people don’t know that, that is not their failure. That is yours. It means you haven’t drawn the line for them between what they do on a Tuesday morning and the customer who decides, six months later, whether you are worth coming back to.

Draw the line. Make it visible. Make it specific to their job. Then watch what happens when people who thought they were behind the scenes realize they have been on the front line the whole time.

Let’s go be great.

Brad