All credit goes to Gregory Wake
Sales people churn the economy no matter what the naysayers may think or what the political climate may be. Without sales people, products and services do not get moved. But who are the greatest sales people? If we are looking at sales people as the essential problem solver then the answer is easy: teachers. True sales people are not charlatans or men and women selling snake oil. The quintessential sales person is someone who finds out another person’s need and solves that need with a product or service. Teachers are the best at doing these things for the following reasons:
Give Presentations Daily
Sales people often are giving pitches and sales presentations that are filled with numbers and facts that will help display the advantages of his/her product. Sales people spend time on their presentations and often deliver it many times a week to perspective buyers. Teaches do all of this also, but they go a step beyond. Teachers must give presentations every day to students. Even as the country moves further and further to student orientated classrooms, the teacher still must facilitate the presentation. So as sales people may spend an hour or so talking about their products or services, teachers must present five to seven hours a day, every day.
Data Driven
Ask almost any teacher in this country what are the top five responsibilities that their school district expects them to uphold and you will most likely here raising test scores on their list. With PARCC testing and Common Core Standards in place in so many states, modern teachers are driven by the data. Sound familiar, of course it does, sales people are driven by the exact same thing. Just as teachers are toiling to raise scores, sales people are working to sell more products, gain more clients or retain more accounts.
Kings and Queens of the Hard Sale
It is no secret that students in this country must attend school by law. This means that whether students want to hear a lesson or not he/she must still attend class. The teacher in turn must be able to find a will and way to teach and provide services to students who may not be interested in what the teacher has to say. Educators in this way must work much harder than traditional sales people. The traditional sales person is meeting with people who are more open to a sale. For example, the car sales person is meeting people who are already coming into the dealership on their own free will. This is why educators at schools work so hard every day because they are giving a hard sale many times. Most of the time they have forty or so minutes in high school or middle school settings for the student to buy or not. Students may feel sleepy just thinking about the Pythagorean theorem, George Washington or William Shakespeare but the teacher must still perform the sales pitch nevertheless.
Team Leaders
Teachers must be team leaders. No teacher can be effective or efficient if they cannot lead their people. It is impossible for a teacher to teach six-year-old students math if they do not trust her and believe that she is a great coach and team leader. It would be just as likely that a teacher would fail at teaching ninth graders about Charles Dickens if he did not have the cooperation and respect of the fourteen-year-old kids that he is presenting to.
Teaching is the bedrock of sales. They lead, celebrate their team's success and communicate well. So do the best sales people in all industries of business.
Photo used from Cybrarian77.
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