Why Selfish Sales Guy Behavior Makes us Avoid You.

No one likes being around selfish people.

A selfish sales person is much worse.

It’s a shame.

The entire craft of generating sales revenue is crumbling due to our inability to change our selfish behavior.

A few days ago the ever-brilliant David Brock, began the following conversation:

“Tis the season to be talking about the “Death Of Sales.” which I’ll shamelessly exploit.  As the year ends, I’m seeing a lot of blogs forecasting the death of sales.   However, it seems that we’ve had the discussion, over and over and over…..  Other than being great blog fodder, I sometimes wonder why we continually speculate about the death of sales and selling.  Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on the part of the poor victims of sales people.

To which I made the following comment:

The fundamental problem with the sales evolution is that while our ACTIONS tend to appear to evolve at a respectably comparable rate to social developments, our ATTITUDES tend to trail that evolution considerably. If ever catching up at all…

We are intellectual Neanderthals crudely pounding away at the sales cycle with any sense of self.

While we are doing similar activities (phone calling, email messaging, social media, etc…) the means (intent, strategy, attitude…) behind those activities is mostly selfish and destructive. Perhaps unintentionally.

Selfish attitudes, and self-limiting activities KILL the person employing them. Sometimes literally. But they also have an effect on everybody around them.

When those selfish sales activities demonstrate short term returns (and usually always do), legions of observers take that as a sign from above that “this is working…” and are quick to jump on the bandwagon.

That spiral has only accelerated as technology allows us to socially broadcast to an unprecedented numbers of “friends”….

The conversation is something that you should consider heading into the New Year.

If people are avoiding you, maybe it’s because they want one less selfish person in their life.