Gareth Smith reflects on his relationship with the word "sales" as he joins the Vue Consulting team.

Is Sales a dirty word?  My answer to that question has altered greatly during my career. Initially my view was that it was the lowest of the low when it came to careers. So my answer was an absolute YES. I promised myself that I would never ever work in sales.

Cut to this point in time and as you guessed it my answer is an unequivocal NO. Why the change? Maturity and experience is one but the main reason for my change in opinion is that I now understand what sales means.

Initially, I thought sales was something that happened at the car yard or in the real estate office, and involved an exchange of cash, but the reality is that all but a fraction of society is involved in sales.

Any professional is required to win the confidence of their peers, Clients and management. Winning the confidence of these three groups means that they can trust you. How did you win this trust? Well you sold your self to them. This was done through a number of actions that won you that wonderfully intangible thing called trust.

Often you have achieved this goal subconsciously and the thought of selling yourself did not enter your mind.  The process that you undoubtedly travelled is one that you can use in all facets of business and once you have learned to use these innate skills then the sales process is easy.

Let’s take an example of a research analyst at a stockbroking firm. Most would likely argue that they are not involved in sales, but when they communicate their financial outlook to their colleagues they are selling themselves. Their colleagues must accept their opinions and outlook in order to act on that information, if they don’t then it boils down to a trust issue. For the broker the thought process is; do I trust the research analysts forecast? If I do, then why.

The why comes from a number of trust actions preformed in the past by the research analyst? They include reliability, credibility and honesty.

• School teachers winning the trust of their pupils
• Lawyers winning the trust of their Clients

Once I accepted that everyone is involved in sales then I wanted to make this process easy to me and now others. One of the many exciting opportunities at Vue Consulting is to train professionals in the sales processes with the end goal of winning trust.

If the sales process is doing the right thing by the Client, being honest, credible and reliable, then How could sales be a dirty word?

This month we talk "Practice Development" with Philip Volk, Managing Director, at the Financial Focus Group.

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