Job Search is Sales

The Secret

 

Back in 2004 I was sitting among a crowd of job seekers listening to a keynote speaker on the subject of networking and job search. “Job search is sales,” the speaker said from the podium. There was a collective groan throughout the audience. This is a common reaction to any declaration where Sales is involved. People don’t like “doing sales” and this is true for any professional discipline outside of a corporate sales team.

 

I’ve witnessed this negative reaction to the word sales more times than I care to count. I’d guess that 80% or more of my clients voice the concern, “I cannot do sales; I’m a _____!” (Fill in the profession: engineer, accountant, buyer, operations manager, logistics analyst, you name it.) Gosh, I’ve even had sales people tell me, “I hate cold calling, that’s not the kind of sales I did.”

 

Actually most sales professionals smile and nod when they hear that job search is sales. Of course, if I said job search is accounting all the accountants would be happy. Not really, the reason why sales professionals smile is that they understand the sales process.

 

It goes something like this: Find out what the prospect needs. Show them your product. Tell them the benefit of the product, namely how the product will solve their problem. Find out what they are willing to spend. Ask them to buy it and you’re done.

 

But what if they don’t buy what I’m selling? Sales people live by an adage: Some will, some won’t and so what. They know they will hear the word NO. They understand that you have to get through the no’s to get to the yes’s.

 

It really is that easy! The reason why the sales professionals smile when they hear that job search is sales is because they know something everyone else doesn’t. They know the secret! The secret: "No one ever died from the word no." Moreover, it’s a numbers game and there are more no’s than yes’s. The good news is that a person in job search only needs one yes. The sales professional gets a yes and has to go out tomorrow and look for the next yes.

  

So when my clients tell me that they aren’t salesman or saleswomen I smile. I say you may not have been, but you are now. You have no choice. You probably weren’t all that good at your professional discipline when you first entered the profession. You were probably scared at first. Then you grew confident with experience. This is how it will be once you accept the fact that job search is sales.

 

Next we’ll look at the elements of a sale in job search.