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Silence.
“Let me re-phrase the question. What do we offer our ‘customers’ that
they will want to buy?”
More silence. I paraphrased the question again and again until my
powers of language began to desert me.
“Let me try once more. What benefits do we deliver to those who use
our services?”
This time the silence was finally broken by a voice from the back of the
room.
“I say old boy, don’t you realize that I am a professional? You cannot
seriously be asking me to act like a f****** salesman?”
I continued the session as a chalk and talk presentation that was
received with considerable enthusiasm. I still sometimes wonder why I
bothered.
The simple fact is that we tend to undervalue the role and skills of the
salesperson. That is where the whole thing began way back in 1931. The
world was in deep depression. In the United States one person in four was
without a job. Many of those that had jobs were doing pretty well. Price
deflation meant that their wages, low as they might be, had more pur-
chasing power with each day that passed. Salespeople were unhappy. They
felt, with some justification, that they were the grease that kept at least
some wheels turning. If 75 per cent of the population could still put food
on the table it was due in no small measure to the skills and determination
of salespeople. Yet salespeople received no recognition for their achieve-
ments. Lawyers were not trusted, but admired for their learning. Teachers
were respected. Doctors were idolized, but admit that you were a salesper-
son and you would be treated with scant respect. When you are in the busi-
ness of struggling to save the economy and keep a nation fed, that hurts.
Salespeople decided to do something about it. They held a national confer-
ence.
The conference decided that what would change things, would be the
recognition that being in sales is to be a profession equal in value, if not in
status, to other professions. Why was such recognition denied them? It was
withheld because they lacked an educational programme and formal
accreditation to an institute. They formed such an institute and charged it
with developing a comprehensive educational programme. The working
salespeople who were elected or dragooned into this task worked with a
will. They developed the programme, but since they were not academics
they based it entirely on their personal experience of what works. They
had little or no knowledge of why it worked, but of one thing they were
sure – it worked because it had to work. Their, often considerable, earnings
were dependent on consistently doing and saying the right thing. Lack of
academic justification continued to rankle, however, so they turned their
half-formulated ideas over to the University of Columbia, New York and
invited them to assess the value of the material. Thus began an academic
and practical research programme that has continued for almost seventy
years in all parts of the world. The result has been probably the most

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