Birth of a Salesman
Recently, I wrote one line in my journal: closing shop for a while. It went blank for a few weeks while I went on vacation. I came back with a fresh set of eyes and a different perspective. I saw a piece from Life magazine, where a staff photographer created a photo essay about an umbrella salesman named Robert Brooks. Something about him stuck with me. Not the umbrellas themselves, but the way he showed up for someone who needed exactly what he had, exactly when they needed it. It wasn’t a glamorous existence. I realized I saw myself in him: not someone filling a quota, but someone trying to sell a solution. Over the past few months, I have been studying the art of sales. I wanted a better understanding of how people sell goods and services. What was my relationship with sales?
A line from Daniel Pink stuck with me: "we're all in sales now." Our instinct is to shudder at that. The first image that comes to mind is a used car lot, someone trying to sell you a lemon at 21% interest. Early in my career, I sold gym memberships in Buffalo, NY. It was my first sales job. The Buffalo Athletic Club (BAC) was located near City Hall, courthouses and other professional companies. This should have been a gold mine for prospecting, but it didn't pan out. I don't know if you know this or not, but the winters in Buffalo can be unforgiving. I relied on people coming into the gym, walk-ups or "ups." I tried to see myself as a "fitness liaison" but I was more of a liaison to the unemployment line. I did not want to see myself as a salesman, and my output reflected that.
Over 10 years later, I found myself in a similar situation. I've spent ample time working within the Salesforce ecosystem, learning the structure behind it, learning business use cases and turning those systems into automations that deliver real results. I think there are a lot of people who are like me, wanting to hang their shingle out and help small businesses achieve results with this software. With there being a lot of people doing the same thing, and advertising on platforms like LinkedIn, it's easy to feel disillusioned and internalize the lack of interest from potential clients.
However, after a confluence of studying sales and a little introspection, I started thinking about my process in different ways. First, I had to deconstruct what a salesperson was in my own mind. In Brian Tracy's book, The Psychology of Selling, he says "salespeople are the lifeblood of the economy." Not everyone is trying to get one over on you, just to fill a quota and pipeline expectations. If they are like me, a salesperson is just bridging the gap between a customer's issue and their solution.
That reframe is what changed how I show up to the work now. I'm not trying to hit a number or talk anyone into something they don't need. I'm doing roughly what Robert Brooks was doing decades ago: showing up for someone who has a real problem, at the moment they need it solved. In my case, the problem is usually sitting inside a Salesforce org somewhere — a process that takes ten clicks when it should take two, a report nobody trusts anymore, an automation that should exist but never got built.
I don't know if that makes me a salesperson in the way I used to dread. I think it just makes me useful. If you're sitting on a Salesforce instance that isn't pulling its weight, I'd be glad to take a look at yours — send me a DM on LinkedIn and let's talk about it.