Are Sales people really Entrepreneurs? Or Are Entrepreneurs really Sales people?

………Or who really cares and does it really matter?

By Kevin Barrett http://www.kjbarrett.com

This past weekend I attended a marketing seminar, specifically related to the Internet… It was put on by IMC Internet Marketing Center, Derek Gehl. Derek brought quite a few of his staff…

I have used the “Insiders Secrets to Marketing you business on the internet”, by Cory Rudl for around 5 years. I recently purchased the new version again, my original copy is over in Australia… and it has changed a bit in the last 5 years… actually very good information… but it has to be turned into knowledge and then we must use it to create something…. Information is not much use, until we use… it.

Some background… when I was in Australia, I was the Marketing Director for a start-up Dot Com company, and we were setting up a fully online educational institute, affiliated with three Australian Universities. We were offering Undergraduate, graduate and advanced degree programs… along with Certificate programs…

This was in the late 90’s, and at that time I “googled”, Internet marketing sales… I know this was before google… but google is such a nice word…. And it is so much easier to say than “I performed a search of the internet to find information related to a topic that I was interested in that had the key words, Internet, marketing and sales”

After, obtaining information from a relatively unknown, young person… a non-traditional marketer… this Dot Com company had in 3 months over 150 students signed up for our Executive MBA (Entrepreneurship)

There were very few Universities in Australia that had that many MBA, students in their programs…

Well, needless to say, It reconfirmed my belief in the power of the Internet… and the impact on Sales and Marketing…

I should point out that I have been using the internet, long before it was called the Internet… I worked for 3M, and I was uploading my reports to our mainframe computer from around the world, using the telephone lines… The platform we used was the Defense Departments and piggy backed off that…

It evolved from there, so I have been using this for a very long time….

A year or so later I met this Internet Guru at a seminar in Sydney…. His name Cory Rudl…

Well, I have been using Cory’s techniques for a long time and they really do work….

Back to the Topic at hand….

Are Sales people really Entrepreneurs? Or Are Entrepreneurs really Sales people?

Somewhere in the early part of the seminar Derek Gehl asked the question:

Who of you are in Sales?

I raised my hand… and out of 300 some odd people, there were not to many more hands that went up…..

It’s interesting… people say that I am an owner, a business person, a marketer an entrepreneur…….

But people really hate to say that they are in sales or a sales person…It seems to be a dirty word… and I guess, Sell is a “Four Letter word”.

The truth is we are all in SALES.

Many years ago, when I was struggling with this perception of a Sales Person, one of my mentors, who was a Senior Vice President of 3M, told me

“that if we were ever going to succeed as a company…. And continue to be creative, innovative and become truly entrepreneurial (This was in the early 80’s)

We needed to stay close and learn from the most creative and entrepreneurial asset we have in this company….. The Salesman”. Today, he would have said “The Salesperson”.

I never forgot that…. The salesperson, is the connect, the nexus, to the market place.

Now, Ben the Vice President, went out into the field with the sales people… and became known as quite a good sales person…

“The best Sales Person in the Organization… Has to be the Chief Executive Officer…” quote Harvey Mackay, author and CEO Mackay Envelopes.

Interesting!

I wrote the following article almost 10 years ago, and it has been published it in several different forms.. This form was targeted towards the Sales Professional, but in reality it was put together as part of a “Pocket Guide for the Entrepreneur”

Feel free to read and download this article….

12 Faces of the New Millennium (a Pocket Guide for the Entrepreneur)

So in summary…

There is no difference in the characteristics of being a Success:FULL Sales person and being a Success:FULL Entrepreneur….

A company like 3M has known this little published SECRET, for many, many years…

And have consistently been one of the most innovative, creative and Entrepreneurial Companies in the world…

If it has worked for 3M, it can work for us….

What we think about we become…. What we think about ourselves we become…..

Perceptions are important… and perceptions about ourselves are even more important.

And that is why….

We need to care…… This small change in our thoughts as to who we are, will have a profound effect on our success.

Not only in our respective business, but also on our Success:FULL Sales….

Kevin Barrett

http://www.kjbarrett.com