The Business of Selling

May 19th, 2010

By Tom Reilly, author of “Value-Added Selling”

There is the art of selling and the science of selling. How good are you at the “business” of selling?

The “business” of selling is the administrative side of this profession—the side most salespeople dread. It includes things like the timely completion of paperwork, planning, organizing, preparing for sales calls, goal setting, cleaning up your work space, filling out call reports, tracking order status, following the supply chain, etc.

This is the least exciting part of selling for most rainmakers. Most salespeople view this as grunt work—a necessary evil. It is also the part of selling that adds discipline to your efforts. Discipline, used as a noun versus a verb, is a positive thing. It keeps you focused. It liberates you from all of the non-value-adding activities. It teaches how and where to say “No” to distractions that take you off mission. You may not like the “business” of selling, but who said you had to like it? You don’t have to like discipline for it to work for you you just have to do it. I have found that top salespeople are proficient at the business side of selling. They recognize that a strong infrastructure is necessary to support their efforts. It is difficult to imagine a salesperson reaching the top of his or her profession without the discipline that comes from this side of selling.

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