Why sales people aren’t different

I’ve had to delay the manifesto post. Don’t panic, the manifesto’s alive and kicking, it’s just that we’ve given the managers a week to fully digest it and comment, before we announce it to the rest of the company. In the mean time… here’s a nice contentious post for you to get your teeth into.


Ever heard the words “yes, but sales people are different”? I don’t know if it’s just where I’ve been working, but I am frequently being told that we can’t apply the same management logic to sales people because they’re different. Imagine if you’d never seen a sales person. What do you think they’d look like?

If you believed everything you were told, then I think they’d be a cross between a drill sergeant (loud), a butter cup (sensitive), an alligator (aggressive), and a prostitute (do anything for money). Let’s just take a moment to visualise that. No wonder we run scared at trying to apply the same rules to this bunch as we do to the rest of the company. They’re different – Oh boy and how!

Hold up a second. I stopped believing in Santa many years ago. Why? [**spoiler alert**] He doesn’t exist folks. Why am I allowing myself to believe in this mythical sales creature? What’s more, I’ve seen sales people. I have friends who are sales people. I don’t think any of them fit this description.

Let’s face it, some ideas are old and tired and need to be cleared out; office uniforms, clocking in, and micro-management to name a few. What if the Salespersonosaurus is one of these and needs to be eliminated, or at least declared extinct.

If you treat sales people as different, then you probably also only measure them by their sales. You do that because it seems easy and scientific. That’s great, well done. Now ask the marketing department how the sales people affect them. Ask the customer support and accounts departments how your sales people affect them. The way sales people work, the type of customers they bring in, and their reaction to being under pressure, all affect the rest of the company. All your hard work getting people to work together, help each other and manage happiness can be undone by a stray Salespersonosaurus. Just watch the joy flood out of people as the words “but sales people are different” leave your lips. If that isn’t proof enough that the Salespersonosaurus needs to go, then there’s no helping you.

So, sales people are… well, just people. How do we deal with them? We deal with them the same way you would others. I’m not saying to remove commission; you’d probably find it way too scary. But it should be seen as a performance bonus. What’s important is to make sure that the sales performance is assessed by everyone who’s affected by it, and not to forget that it includes your other teams; it’s not enough just to sell at all costs. If you do have a Salespersonosaurus who won’t change and only cares about their sales, then [please sit down before reading this] you need to let them go, even if they were hitting sales targets.

Yes, I know that this post will have you sales managers and Salespersonosauruses shouting, crying, banging your fists, or demanding more commission. Don’t panic, there will be thousands of soulless companies around that work to preserve and protect your kind. But, if you ever want to be where everyone feels like they’re working together with smiles on their faces and relationships built on trust and respect… then maybe, just maybe, you need to leave the dinosaurs in the museum.