I Hate Sales Too
As I was writing my last post I was reminded of an experience I had in high school that is very much related.
In general I hate sales, or at least the average sales cycle, sales person, sales strategy, etc. Just as with marketing it tends to be full of empty rhetoric and people just trying to take your money.
When I was in high school, though, I sold knives door to door for a company called Vector Marketing Corporation that sold Cutco Knives. Despite my dislike for sales in general, I was proud of my position and accelled in it. Why? Well I was proud of what I was selling. I didn't feel ashamed of selling it. In fact I felt a sort of obligation to sell it. This sense of obligation derived mostly from one encounter I had when I first started selling the knives.
The idea behind Cutco is to take people you know, try to sell them the knives and get referrals to their friends, contact the friends and try to sell them the knives and get more referrals. So one of my first customers was one of my best friends father.
I did the demonstration for him and he decided to buy a set of steak knives, but as he was buying them he noted that the only reason he was buying them was because I was a friend of the family. Well about a month after the purchase I saw him again and he began to thank me repeatedly for selling him the knives because he loved using them so much and wanted to buy some more knives.
I feek like this is a fantastic example about how salespeople and marketers have a duty to try and convince people that your product will make their lives better, unless of course if the product will not, in which case they should'nt be selling it.
ADDENDUM
An anonymous commenter pointed out that I am promoting a dishonest company in this post. I agree. I meant to focus on the quality of the product and express my belief that it really is important for people to sell high quality products, putting them in the hands of people who really need them. Vector Marketing Corporation does produce a high quality product in my opinion. I use Cutco knives myself and am very satisfied with them.
The company itself, though, does have a deceptive culture that I experienced first hand and was the primary reason for me leaving. The most significant example of the deception comes in the first interview when you are trying to land the job. They put on a huge production around the interview process and congratulate you on landing the job and ask you not to discuss it with the other applicants so that they are not overly dissapointed if they are not hired.
What is wrong with this? Well they hire everyone. Literally every person that walks through the door is hired (there may be some exceptions but I never saw one). The reason they don't tell you this is because even though all these people are hired very few people take the job. They don't want you to question this. At the very least this was how it worked in my office, but I would imagine it is like this everywhere as they train everyone from the manager down very specifically on how to do their job.
I still value the sales experience I garnered from that job, but I couldn't stand the dishonesty involved. I can not recommend that anyone work there for that fact alone.
I just wanted to make sure this point was not hidden in the comments.
In general I hate sales, or at least the average sales cycle, sales person, sales strategy, etc. Just as with marketing it tends to be full of empty rhetoric and people just trying to take your money.
When I was in high school, though, I sold knives door to door for a company called Vector Marketing Corporation that sold Cutco Knives. Despite my dislike for sales in general, I was proud of my position and accelled in it. Why? Well I was proud of what I was selling. I didn't feel ashamed of selling it. In fact I felt a sort of obligation to sell it. This sense of obligation derived mostly from one encounter I had when I first started selling the knives.
The idea behind Cutco is to take people you know, try to sell them the knives and get referrals to their friends, contact the friends and try to sell them the knives and get more referrals. So one of my first customers was one of my best friends father.
I did the demonstration for him and he decided to buy a set of steak knives, but as he was buying them he noted that the only reason he was buying them was because I was a friend of the family. Well about a month after the purchase I saw him again and he began to thank me repeatedly for selling him the knives because he loved using them so much and wanted to buy some more knives.
I feek like this is a fantastic example about how salespeople and marketers have a duty to try and convince people that your product will make their lives better, unless of course if the product will not, in which case they should'nt be selling it.
ADDENDUM
An anonymous commenter pointed out that I am promoting a dishonest company in this post. I agree. I meant to focus on the quality of the product and express my belief that it really is important for people to sell high quality products, putting them in the hands of people who really need them. Vector Marketing Corporation does produce a high quality product in my opinion. I use Cutco knives myself and am very satisfied with them.
The company itself, though, does have a deceptive culture that I experienced first hand and was the primary reason for me leaving. The most significant example of the deception comes in the first interview when you are trying to land the job. They put on a huge production around the interview process and congratulate you on landing the job and ask you not to discuss it with the other applicants so that they are not overly dissapointed if they are not hired.
What is wrong with this? Well they hire everyone. Literally every person that walks through the door is hired (there may be some exceptions but I never saw one). The reason they don't tell you this is because even though all these people are hired very few people take the job. They don't want you to question this. At the very least this was how it worked in my office, but I would imagine it is like this everywhere as they train everyone from the manager down very specifically on how to do their job.
I still value the sales experience I garnered from that job, but I couldn't stand the dishonesty involved. I can not recommend that anyone work there for that fact alone.
I just wanted to make sure this point was not hidden in the comments.
posted by The Entreprexplorer | 12:59 PM
7 Comments:
Excellent post, Jared. I've linked to it here.
I agree - I think it's fantastic to sell great products. I'm not sure how sustainable selling poor products is, as well.
However, I had an opportunity to work for CUTCO knives a few months ago (I'm 18).
I almost accepted the job, but I did some research online first. What I found persuaded me not to.
I can't remember the link, but the gist of it was CUTCO had a fantastic warranty, but basically lied about their products. To their salespeople, actually; when you were selling to people, you believed in them. Great gimmick, I guess.
However, CUTCO knives were (1) overpriced compared to the competition, and (2) not as high quality.
Oh, don't get me wrong. They are good knives. To someone who's only used normal knives in the past, they're a huge step up; no question about it. Plus, the come with an unbeatable warranty - you can send the knives in decades later, and they'll replace them for you. Free.
But the knives are overpriced, and they use deceitful marketing. In the worst way - they lie to their employees, as well.
So I agree with your post, but quibble over your example :-)
In response to the anonymous 18 year old:
I actually ended up leaving that company because of the dishonesty that I saw there. I apologize if my example promoted Vector Marketing too much as I completely agree that it lies to its employees.
I don't completely agree with the assertions of overpricedness and lack of quality. I still find my cutco knives to be of very high quality. Although there may be a cheaper alternative out there that is of higher quality in some regards, it would not be a completely fair comparison as cutco has a number of features that make it user-friendly, such as the handle.
So again I apologize for promoting Vector Marketing Corporation, although I do find that they sell a high quality product (imho). Of course maybe I just drank too much of the deceitful kool-aid. I'll leave that up to you to decide.
Thanks for the inciteful comment.
Why are you appologizing for promoting a company that you've admited multiple times has a great product? :)
Although it's fair to say that you disagree with their practices, some people may not care and may still choose to do business with them because they have a great product.
Excellent post though - it's true, good sales skills are hard to come by.
Joseph,
I agree. I am not necessarily trying to discourage people from using Cutco knives (I do myself), but I wanted to point out that there are problems with the company.
The fact that someone who had recently considered working for the company stumbled across my blog means that someone could read the post who is in the process of deciding whether or not to work for Vector.
I just want to make sure that my complete thoughts on the company are transparent so that such a person has all the information.
(that was a bit of a mouthful, hope it is clear)
I find it sort of interesting that your post is on "sales" yet you find it surprising that Vector recruits nearly everybody that steps foot in their offices. The nature of most direct sales organizations is to "recruit them all and let desire sort them out." At least for those people whose lack of desire sorts them "out," they will receive a generous base pay for their efforts, as I'm sure you recall.
As far as the anonymous poster goes on this page, can you really believe everything you read on the internet? Now, I am not pro-Vector or anti-Vector, but just because there are web sites that tell me that Wal-Mart endorses scamful and unethical labour practices here in North America doesn't mean I am going to believe it. If you are 18 and have never worked with the company, how can you be so sure that the company lies to their staff? How can you be sure their product is overpriced if you have never priced out their competition? Do you know what qualities make a cutlery product high quality?
I enjoyed reading this article, but I must say that both the article and the various comments posted it to it seem to make a lot of generalizations.
Brent,
In my experience with Vector marketing my problem was not that they recruit everyone who comes through the door, but that they put on a charade of hiring people.
They go through an interview process in which the only goal is to make people believe that they were selected where as they were actually selected just by showing up.
I believe strongly in sales. I believe just as strongly in being honest during the sales process. The process, at least in my office, was to make people believe they were the cream of the crop simply to help explain why 80% of the interviewees never came back. That is simply dishonest and is easily distinguishable from a legitimate sales process.
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