I’m not in Sales

I would like to share a funny story, today.

But i will let you decide if it’s the i’m laughing hard kind of funny, or the grossed out funny. I don’t know what to think about this myself.

This week I received yet another offer for a Sales position. That happens once every one or two weeks, on average. Hey, that’s great, right? There are people out there, usually recruiters, that discover my profile, and offer me a job! In Italy we have under 35 unemployment rate around 40% when I am writing this, so that’s a good news, right?

Well. wrong actually, because I am not in sales. As a consultant, there is a certain point where i have to talk money, but at that point usually i just say my price, and the other party gives me the ok to start. I come from marketing, and I have a fair enough understanding of how a customer funnel works, to have built mine in such a way that I basically have not to sell anything.

Allow me to spend some words on this. I’m not saying that this is the best way to be, for a consultant (in fact, it is probably over complicated), but I like to work in a way that doesn’t force me to hard-sell my services. The idea is that i put my prospect clients in the position to ask for my consulting services, after building a relationship with them.

The key point in my customer funnel is the Relationship i build with my prospects. It’s difficult to jump-start on a relationship, but in the last year i worked very hard toward this objective. I’ve rebuilt my online presence from the ground up, to give the right impression to whoever has the chance to get in touch with me. I write articles, and i phrase all my text deliberately to a simple objective: allowing people to know me, before actually knowing me.

You see, I don’t have any sales page on my website, or my Linkedin profile. What I do have is a lot of pages and posts that tell who I am, how I work, what my ideas are. What I tried to accomplish is that when you land on my profile (for example because you are searching for a professional in my field) you have a chance to understand who I am, even before contacting me. A managed first impression, which I try to confirm with a phone call, or a in person meeting. And small confirmation after small confirmation, I build my relationship with my prospect clients.

What happens before and after this is interesting the same, but in my perspective this is the key point: my business development activity is based on building personal and professional relationships, and I never hard-sell (I actually am not that capable to).

Just to give some other details, what brings people on my profile is basically 2 things: my Linkedin activity, which is, again, based on promoting my Brand and building relationships one comment or private message at time (not that scalable, but very personal and effective); and my public speaking activities, which again I organize through my network. Again, you may see how important good relationships are in my line of work!

Then how can I sell, you may ask? Well, thank to the relationship I build I try to understand if my client’s needs match my offer. If they don’t, I advise them about other professionals or agencies to cover their needs. If they do, I agree upon the objectives that are to be reached. I agree on what’s the value on those objectives. And i tell them that after those objectives will be reached, they will want to pay me a very reasonable share of that value. In the back of my mind I match this value with the opportunity cost for my time. If the final value is greater than the time I need to accomplish it, then I accept the work. In the end, it’s me who decide if to accept the work or not.

Now you probably fully understand why I don’t do sales. I apply a somehow hardcore version if Inbound Marketing principles, and I try to have people ask me for services rather than push them down their throats.

Back to the main story, I understand that somehow there are people that don’t have time to look for all the clues I left for them. These ones have a quick glance at my profile, register only a couple words, and go for the standardized private message. For example, if in my Linkedin profile (in different paragraphs, mind you), there are the words Networking and Marketing, then some reach the conclusion that i do Network Marketing, which basically means sales.

Other ones reach the conclusion that because I’m into marketing, then i do Sales. That in my opinion underlines an utter ignorance about what the difference between sales and marketing is.

Then my personal favourite. I understand this is a cultural perversion, and i find this to be the creepiest of them all: in Italy, a Consultant is 9 times out of 10 a sales consultant. Which means in the best case scenario that he or she is a Business Developer who also follows accounts. In the worst case it’s just a sales agent with a fancy title. You know, in Italy we have a thing for fancy titles, especially if they have an american ring to it. Many people don’t even speak english, but they have a fancy english title.

Go figure.

In understand my job is easy to misunderstand (and that’s part of the reason I so heavily invest in building relationships). My problem is with the people that do not respect my time, probably because they don’t know the value of their’s.

So this post is for you, anonymous recruiter, that are thinking about contacting me to offer me a Sales position. I’m not interested, so please, spare mine and your time, and don’t do that.