Regardless of Your Role, Everyone is a Salesperson

When you work for a company, whenever you interact with someone outside your organization, you represent the company. That makes every single person, regardless of his or her job title, a salesperson of sorts.

No matter what industry a company does business in, sales are at the core of success. Sales are obviously the main focus of the designated sales team, but real sales opportunities often present themselves to people in all positions. The differentiator is whether people recognize those opportunities and feel empowered to act on them.

Daniel Pink, who gave one of the 20 most-viewed TED Talks, says every single person who interacts with others is involved in sales: “All of you are likely spending more time than you realize selling in a broader sense—pitching colleagues, persuading funders, cajoling kids. Like it or not, we’re all in sales now.”

At TSP, we encourage a collaborative culture that wants everyone to see sales opportunities and follow through on them. On-site service professionals are a huge part of this idea, since they have the best on-the-ground view of how our clients operate and know where we could fulfill additional needs. The motivation for engineers to sell isn’t based on commissions, but on the overall attitude of helpfulness and problem solving that sets TSP apart in the technology services and industrial automation solutions industries. Every “sale” leads to more work, more opportunities to grow, and better long-term company health. That’s good for everyone.

A great way to encourage salesmanship in every employee is to recognize a job well done. When clients write glowing reviews, we pass them on to the people who did the work so they know how valued they really are. When people know they’re part of a team, they’re more motivated to play ball.

We want our employees to get to know clients personally and truly listen to their needs. A designated sales force can come up with great ideas for service opportunities, but the engineers are the ones who have an unparalleled perspective on gaps in client processes that we could fill.

Sales isn’t about selling, it’s about finding ways you can help a client and helping the client accomplish what they want to accomplish. That’s what TSP is all about.