This week I attended a home party thrown by one of my friends. About ten women showed up, smiling and laughing, enjoying the wine and cookies while browsing the items on display.
The sales lady had apparently been with the company for quite some time, and she worked for not only that home party business but another one as well.
Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never been a saleswoman, nor felt comfortable when I had to sell items. I can recall being hired by Service Merchandise years ago to work at the jewelry counter. I went out and purchased several very nice outfits, got all dressed up and showed up that first day of work with a smile in my eyes and a spark to my step. Working behind the jewelry counter was fun, I thought.
And then I had to sell items.
I just couldn’t do it. I have the mentality that if someone wants something they will tell me, and buy it. If they don’t know, then I don’t want to persuade them to purchase something they may wind up regretting in two days or two months. Instead, I would want them to be one hundred percent sure they were interested in the item, couldn’t find it elsewhere and had to have it that day. Then I could sell.
I quit the job a few weeks later. It just wasn’t for me.
Fast forward to this party. The girl in charge had the sales lady role going. She was smooth. She walked around with items draping over her arms ( I won’t tell you what the company was or what she sold). She told us why we couldn’t live without it and how often she used it and how she used it and why she used it and how many people told her how great that it was that she used it.
At the end of the night, she spent checkout time trying to persuade us all to throw a party. She even used the empathy card, stating that our friend had wanted this and that and she wouldn’t get it if we didn’t start booking parties. I got a bit irritated at this part of the pitch-would seem to me that you wouldn’t play on someone’s empathy card to make them do something-until I came home and realized that this is what sales entails, and this is probably what made her a fairly high seller in her company.
Do you have what it takes to be a sales person? Can you talk to people easily? Can you show people why they need something that they might not understand that they need? Can you make it work for them? Certainly some people need, say, a salad shooter, particularly someone who throws parties all of the time. Yet can you make the person who never has a party, is single and allergic to lettuce purchase a salad shooter? If so, you should be in sales.
Sales people can make a ton of money, and they get many nice perks as well, such as free items from the company and great trips to attend retreats and conferences. I have one friend who heads down to San Diego once a year, stays in a nice resort and gets massages-all paid for by her company!
Sales are not for me, and this was confirmed once again when I attended that party, but if you make a good sales person, you might want to consider looking into a sales career. The possibilities are endless as far as both money earned and items sold are concerned.
Happy Selling!