How are your sales skills?

So... how good of a sales person are you?

If your response is that you are not in sales, think again.

If you stop and carefully consider you life and the motions you go through, at some point you are a salesperson. You may not realize it at the time, however.

Let's take the obvious... something that we are all familiar with, unless you are one of the many career welfare recipients in this great land.

The Resume'

Yes... that is what I said. In fact, consider the entire job search process. You are going into a place to look for a job or a career. You are going to try and convince that HR person that you are the best person for the job. This is the best example of a salesperson, only what you are selling is your services in return for your future.

You may think that this does not apply to all jobs, but I disagree. Whether you are trying to get a job as a courtesy clerk at a grocery store or working the fryer at the local McDonalds, you are providing your services in an attempt to move up in the company, thusly you are selling your skills, or selling your ability to learn a new trade and be a promotable asset.

This being said, everyone should take their jobs seriously. If you do not like your job, and we have all had a job we did not like (mine was working Fine Men's Clothing at Harris' Dept Store.) you should still do the very best you can, and be proud of the work you do. Any time you get sick and think you might just slack off a little, think if the fact that you are not irreplaceable... there are plenty of people that will be happy to take you place should you become a liability over an asset.

Lets look at the next item...

Your Mate (Relationships)

A wise person once said that Marriage is just a legalized and institutionalized form of prostitution.

OK... that was crass, I know, but lets look at the way a relationship works, and you will see that there IS a certain amount of salesmanship in a relationship.

Courting.
The courting process goes back to the beginning of the human race. If you want to imagine the old cartoons of a caveman dragging his mate by the hair from location to location, then you have a cute imagination.

Primitive man, more than likely, courted in much the same way that animals court. The males fight for the right to mate by demonstrating who was superior and stronger. As a testament to natural selection, this then made sure that the strongest survived and the weaker, sickly, died off.

These days it is not really acceptable for people to fight for the right to mate with a particular female, although it does still happen, and mostly in bars and at the urging of young or deranged women (see my article about Cheaters.)

I will use myself and my relationship as an example of a long term successful relationship sales event. My wife and I have been married for fifteen years. I met her through her boyfriend almost eighteen years ago. I moved in with him for need of getting out of my mother's house, and he brought in his girlfriend.

Long story short, she and I developed a relationship due in part to the fact that he was abusive to her, and I treated her like she was a friend. Over time she left him, and her and I became good friends, then over time we nurtured the friendship into something more.

The moral to that story would be that the first person failed the task, and I came in and took over. While this makes things sound a little impersonal, I do not want to give the wrong impression. If I could say anything to her ex-boyfriend, then it you be thank you for being a lousy sales person, because I came out with the better end of the deal. We have had a wonderful relationship and will continue to.

Ok... Now I know that there are many of you who might read this and think that my opinion is silly or unfounded. That may be the case, but these are observations made from from an attempt to be neutral. These are also just my opinions, nothing more. If you do not like them, then that is your opinion, and that is human nature. Yes... opinions are like assholes, and yes... to some they are all full of shit.