1.1 What Is Professional Selling and Sales?

“Nothing happens until someone sells something.” This quote has been attributed to many prominent business leaders, including Thomas J. Watson, the former CEO of IBM, and Peter Drucker, a management guru. Regardless of its origin, in this quote lies a rallying cry, a business mantra that elevates the importance of selling. But what does this really mean?

If sales were to cease to exist, and no business transactions were to take place, what would be the result for other business functions? There would be no need for production in manufacturing. With no production, there would be no products to transport or distribute. There would be nothing to market or advertise. There would be nothing to account for and no need to project financial earnings. The economic engine of our society is to sell goods and services to consumers. Some may argue that innovation is the engine of economic growth. However, even at the core of innovation is an idea that must be sold. In order for that idea to be refined and organized into an innovative solution, it had to be sold by someone and to someone.

Sales are the lifeblood of any business (for-profit and not-for-profit included). Until a sale is made, there is very little that accounting, finance, operations, and human resource departments do to create value for the business. Sure, most people would rather develop new products, design campaigns, calculate ratios and analyze the numbers, or steer a vision and culture than sell a company’s products or services. In the end, however, a business is not in business very long unless there are sales that are made and deals that are won. Sales are the single most important strategic contingency of the business. That is, a business without sales does not stay in business very long, while a business that makes sales is able to thrive and grow.

Professional selling is defined as the process of persuading and assisting a prospective customer to buy goods or services in exchange for money. In the context of this book, a sale is the outcome of selling activity and has economic and commercial significance to the individual seller and the selling firm. It is important to distinguish that a sale in this context is not the promotional time period in which a retailer discounts the price of a good or service. Sales is the process and set of activities that an individual salesperson, a team of salespeople, and the selling organization carry out to build and create value for the firm and the customers it serves.