A Sales Job: Can Avoid When Young, Unavoidable When Older

Doing sales to potential clients has never been my strong suit. Fresh out of undergrad, I used to work in sales for the Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten, where I truly struggled with the high-pressure tactics and the rigorous performance evaluation based on KPIs. It was no wonder that I left Rakuten less than a year after I happily joined the firm, directionless and somewhat traumatized by the experience doing sales for the firm. Ever seen then, all of my jobs have been "back office," handling operations and content creation with no direct interaction with end clients.

That is, until my current job at Blackpeak. As the de facto on-the-ground representative of the company in Japan, I am in the position of communicating directly with clients from both the country itself and across the world interested in doing research about Japanese entities. Sometimes, the clients have a clear understanding of their needs and what they request from Blackpeak. But just as often, potential clients have little understanding of what the company can do for them, and that is when a bit of explanation, combined with persuasion, determines whether a new project comes in or not.

The resulting sales skill goes much beyond understanding the capabilities and the scope of the services the company offers. After four years on the job, the basic contours of what the firm can and cannot do has become much clearer. But prodding people who are sitting on the fence about spending money on the various services the company has to offer? That is something that no one has trained me to do systematically and I basically have to learn and continue to improve by trial and error. For those who are not mentally strong, the continued rejections can take their mental toll.

Yet, as I come to realize at age 34, being the manager of a project-based company, whatever the industry the company happens to be in, often entails the manager being the primary salesperson for the company. Clients expect respect, in the form of more senior people meeting them to talk about projects. That means while the execution of the projects is passed down the corporate hierarchy, to be done by more junior staff, the nitty-gritty business of meeting clients and persuading them to buy products and services often ends up the sole responsibility of senior staff.

Especially in small companies with no dedicated sales personnel and teams, it feels like those who rose up the hierarchy by being good at executing projects all of a sudden find themselves seeing their job roles change, without any official announcements, from doing projects to selling them. For those who are used to the operations side of the business, the change can feel drastic, and getting used to the new expectations may incur a steep learning curve. With no systematic training programs for doing sales in place, many will struggle even as they rise up the hierarchy.

Because doing sales as a senior staff member in a small firm is unavoidable, it would make sense for individuals who find themselves in such a position to be given some sort of training, rather than risk the company's reputation through their personal trial-and-error process. This is true, especially for companies that have a globe-spanning clientele, as sales skills may not always be transnational. How to persuade and communicate confidently mean different things to different people, given their differing sociocultural backgrounds.

Unfortunately, small companies often do not have the luxury of sparing capable staff members to do sales training. The small number of staff often means it is all hands on deck when the project pipeline is full, leaving no one with enough of an open schedule to do training. And frankly, becoming good at sales is not always possible by just going through a few lectures and role-playing sessions. Continued training and feedback are essential in ensuring that mistakes are realized and suggestions are implemented as they are intended.

Thus, how to train people who are suddenly put in sales roles because of their increasing seniority, when they are no one who can do training, is a big question with no ready answer. And because there are no objective measures of what are considered good and bad sales tactics (not reflected in more sales revenues, that is), it is difficult to streamline sales training programs even when capacity is there to create and undertake them. It is a question that I will grapple with both at a personal and company level as I continue to explore sales as a senior staff myself.