{"id":310,"date":"2024-01-01T12:54:19","date_gmt":"2024-01-01T20:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevinhoffberg.com\/?p=310"},"modified":"2024-01-01T12:54:19","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T20:54:19","slug":"how-i-came-to-selling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinhoffberg.com\/how-i-came-to-selling\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Came To Selling"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is how my journey as a salesperson (and later teacher, coach, and consultant) began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother was a teacher. Her parents were both teachers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father was a successful and prominent attorney. His father was a self-made man who died wealthy. He made his money as an accountant. He made his wealth investing in real estate, Broadway shows, and stocks and bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, there was nothing in my background suggesting that I would become a peddler (and then a peddler of peddling!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be a big game hunter and a fireman. I didn\u2019t know any of the former or the later, so it\u2019s unclear where those ideas came from. Later I wanted to be an architect, or possibly a lawyer. At least I knew one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had no clear aim upon high school graduation other than to get out of town. When forced to declare a major, I settled on political science. It seemed more serious than English or History. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halfway through college I turned 18. This was in the early 70\u2019s, which meant I was soon in receipt of a draft card with a troublingly low number. Viet Nam beckoned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I finished college, and thus my draft deferment, the helicopters had all gone home and there was no more non-war to fight. By that time, I no longer wanted to be an attorney. I still had no idea what I would do with myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My First Sales Job<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Through an odd set of circumstances, I got offered the chance to be the assistant manager at a backpacking shop. This was at a time when backpacking had become popular, largely in response to the emotional overhang of the big oil shocks of the early and mid-seventies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a funny choice for me. I didn\u2019t know anything about down vests, backpacks, or hiking boots. I also didn\u2019t especially like being outdoors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I needed a job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father was beside himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On my first day, my manager handed me a stack of blank 3×5 cards and a pen. He told me to write down the key selling points of everything in the store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote hundreds of cards. That was my first sales training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is, I had zero sales skills. I was usually polite, but not always. I didn\u2019t know to ask questions beyond, \u201cMay I help you?\u201d I mostly threw up what I had memorized about the products and hoped they would buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can also remember being completely intimidated by our higher end gear. For example, we had a tent that cost something like $400. That was half a month\u2019s salary for me. It felt impossibly rich to me, so I couldn\u2019t imagine that anyone would think otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day a guy walked in, pointed at the tent, and said he wanted it. Really?  I wrote up the order, took his money, and thought I was the prince of sales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine that. I had sold a $400 tent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I quit the backpacking business to help renovate houses in a \u201ctransitional neighborhood.\u201d I had no idea what I was doing when I started, but I was getting $9 an hour under the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned the trades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lived at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father was beside himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A while later, I moved to Hawaii to start a coffee company with two college pals. It went on to be very successful. I went on to do something else before it got that way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My First Real Sales Job<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The advertisement in the newspaper promised professional sales training and the chance to make $70,000 in your second year. In 1981, coming from a string of $800 a month jobs, that seemed like an impossibly large sum of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hiring seminar was intoxicating.  All those attractive, self-confident people. All dressed in nice conservative suits. All talking about all the money they were making. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to work there the next Monday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was told how to dress. I was given a pitch to memorize and a slick pitch book to whip out in front of prospects. I was assigned a territory and sent out to cold call. More than forty years later, I still remember parts of the pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first job was selling something called a \u201cneeds analysis.\u201d Basically, I was an appointment getter for someone else. When HE sold a seminar, I got paid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d get up in the morning, put on a white shirt, striped tie, three-piece suit, and a pair of wingtips. I carried a briefcase. I was 24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driving to my territory, I would stop at a public restroom to throw up. That done, I\u2019d park my car and proceed to walk into small business after small business. With business card in hand, I would ask in my most confident voice, \u201cHi, is the owner or manager here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I was lucky, they thought I was a salesperson. In retrospect, given how I was dressed, FBI, IRS, or INS would have been as good a guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was tough going. This was not fun. I set zero appointments that first week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Big Lesson<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One day, something happened that changed my approach to selling forever.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was walking down the street. Coming the other way was one of my fellow cold-calling colleagues.  He actually looked happy. Almost crazy happy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked, \u201cWhat happened,\u201d \u201cWhere he could get some,\u201d and hoped that it didn\u2019t cost too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My colleague told me the day before he had gone \u201cO\u201d for \u201c6\u201d \u2013 not one appointment set.  This felt familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, he\u2019d gone back to those same people and said something like this: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in here yesterday.  I didn\u2019t feel very well and didn\u2019t do a very good job.  I wasted your time and my employer\u2019s money.  I have a small favor to ask . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was the favor?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can I try it again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That day he went six for six.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out a little bit of \u201cnot okay\u201d can radically shift the buyer\/seller interaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motivation and (some) Ability Are Not Always Enough <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I gutted out the learning curve and wound-up establishing records for the number of appointments set. In a hiring class of twelve, I was the star. One of the few that lasted more than a few weeks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem was the guy following me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t sell diddly. So, I didn\u2019t make diddly. So, they promoted me. Now I was the guy selling seminar seats behind someone else\u2019s appointments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately the company decided to change the compensation plan. Now it was paying the appointment getter $10 for each appointment set. Good for them, but not for me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of qualifying the buyer, they just gave up the game and begged the business owners to see me so they could get paid. I was starting from scratch. I just didn\u2019t know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sold my tail off and got nowhere. After three months I had made $1850, a step down from what I had made hawking sleeping bags. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I quit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facing the Music<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Was it me or the system? Was I a failure\u2014as a salesperson and\/or human being\u2014or was it the company and its process? Did I screw up, or was I set up to fail from the start?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those questions set me on a journey that continued in different ways for more than forty years. I would never again put myself in a situation where I was so without the resources I needed to be successful.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I vowed to become an expert on why people buy and what people like me could do to help that process along. It began with reading every book I could find (this was the 80s) on sales, influence, persuasion, and self-esteem. I bought cassette tapes (still the 80s). I went to every seminar I could by all the sales luminaries of the day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The material I found most interesting came from academic sources with no obvious connection to sales. I came to regard these sources as the real bedrock material. Some examples . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n