Pride is a contentious subject especially when it is associated with the sales profession.
On one hand, Pride is defined as a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired. Associated feelings like Satisfaction, Content, Fulfillment, Pleasure, Delight and Joy also spring to mind.
On the other hand, Pride, or the more accurate term Vainglory, describes excessive or ostentatious pride especially in one’s achievements resulting in vanity and potentially arrogance, conceit, pomp, ostentation, egotism, narcissism, pride, vanity, ego trip and boastfulness.
We’ve all seen vainglory writ large when it comes to the general descriptors of salespeople in movies, books, tropes and the general zeitgeist. Just think Wolf of Wall Street or the 600lb Sales Gorilla holding your sales team hostage and you know what I mean.
However, most salespeople are not vainglorious. They are decent people who do good work in business and community. Proactive, knowledgeable, helpful, curious, open-minded, assertive and positive in their sales endeavours, many successful salespeople also display humility which is the antidote to vainglory. They know they are only as good as their last sale. Too often many salespeople don’t celebrate their wins enough yet there’s plenty to be proud of when it comes to having a successful sales career.
There’s the pride in achieving one’s sales budget, winning that new big client, resigning a record-breaking deal, breaking into new markets, winning market share, achieving a big bonus and so on.
Less obviously celebrated but which I think should feature much more prominently is the difference we, as salespeople, can make to other people’s lives – personal and professional.
Salespeople bring new ideas, concepts and innovations to help people in business and/or life; we help people to navigate tricky situations, guide them and provide advice to give them confidence to make informed decisions and the necessary changes, we give our clients access to the products, services, tools, resources, processes, insights and knowledge they can use to make a difference. I can’t speak for anyone else, but when we help our clients achieve things, I feel very proud of my part in that.
Making or exceeding sales budget is one thing, but making a real difference in someone’s life, well, that makes me feel even better. Here’s my case in point.
The other day we received an email from one of our clients that made us feel immensely proud. They are a small team of 10 working in software consulting; not everyone is directly responsible for sales but none the less I invited the whole team to attend the 1-day kick off sales training workshop in person so they could understand the principles and processes of human-centred sales practices and how to foster healthy prosperous relationships and sell better faster.
While we still have 6 x 1-hour remote follow up sessions scheduled every 2 weeks to deliver to help embed what they have learnt, less than 18 hours post the workshop this email arrived in my inbox:
Hi Sue,
S** sold 80-100hrs this morning with his customer.
R** has followed up 3 or 4 leads and booked a number of customer meet n greets (solution design).
I sat in a meeting and did a WWW with a customer, got 3 opportunities out. Got another one in 30mins.
And it’s before 11 am
A little confidence goes a long way eh.
I’ll need more delivery capacity….
Cheers,
As I said before, selling is a noble profession, and we can be very proud of being salespeople.
Remember everybody lives by selling something.
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