[jisnowhere]

So i thought id go into sales, in order to earn some $....Ive been there less than 10 days. I think i hate it. I'm such an introvert. I have great friends, 4 of them lol, but other than that, i just dont care to get out and meet people, and this job entails that i not only meet people, but meet them, and convince them that i have something good for them. I believe in the product, thats not the problem. Its just that i have a strong bent for leaving others to make decisions for themselves. I hate for people to give me unsolicited advice and I hate to offer it to others.

Have any of you had any experience and/or success in sales?

[dalidaisy]

Pffft! Shaking people down? I don't think so!

First of all, approaching people makes me uncomfortable. Trying to start a conversation is excrutiating. And putting pressure on someone is completely undoable. I'd rather stab myself in the eye repeatedly with a toothpick than do sales.

Good luck to you if you choose to continue with that...

[Monte314]

Technical marketing, yes; sales, no. Glad-handing and cold calls don't go well with INTJ.

[jisnowhere]

yeah...its 10 am here..i was supposed to be tracking down potential clients 2hrs ago...ive got friends saying i should give it a shot..but im not the type to be pursuaded much, for long anyway..

daisy/monte - i know what you mean..i dont think this is going to work..man..this sucks..here i am at 33, have a BS in Kinesiology and a Masters Degree in Teaching (hated teaching) and feel lost as a polar bear in jamaica...

ive taken the Law School Admissions Test, and have toyed w the idea of law school..but i dont think i have enough info on whether or not id like a career in law, though ive been offered a scholarship to a small school...right now, id be happy if i could work in a bookstore all day, w no one bothering me...i know theres a place for such personalities, but man! im finding it hard to find my place in this world...

am i the only one to feel this way???

[dalidaisy]

	Originally Posted by jisnowhere To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	am i the only one to feel this way???

God no! I have yet to find my place...

I work in marketing. I just kind of fell into it & it's just what I do, for 15 years now. I have no idea what else I would do. I wish I had the option of going back to college.

Mostly, I wish I had someone to help guide me. I feel so lost...

[jisnowhere]

daisy - thanks for your response.. i started a new thread in the members only communty area to see if others will chime in about their experiences w feeling lost. i think u can get there via


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[rwyatt365]

Sales!

It's not the most comfortable profession for an INTJ (by any stretch of the imagination). I was in sales for almost two years (not because I wanted to be, mind you), I eventually became a manager of two different stores for the chain that I worked for. As a salesperson, I was consistently among the top 5 sellers. And as a manager, I consistently racked up sales that were above the previous years averages.

Having said that...I hated every minute of being in sales! It wasn't that I hated being around people I just didn't prefer to be around people, and I hated not having a choice. What I really hated was being required to employ hackneyed sales "techniques" because someone, somewhere decided that "this is the most effective way to make a sale". Bulls**t! I always did better doing things my way, and being flexible enough to change according to the customer, than using any trite sales pitches.

The only way I survived as long as I did was to make the whole thing a game. My goal was to rack up the biggest sales volume for the day, or to sell something that no one else had been able to sell. I set myself a target every day, and most days I attained that target. Otherwise, I think I might have hurt some people.

[dalidaisy]

	Originally Posted by rwyatt365 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What I really hated was being required to employ hackneyed sales "techniques" because someone, somewhere decided that "this is the most effective way to make a sale". Bulls**t! I always did better doing things my way, and being flexible enough to change according to the customer, than using any trite sales pitches.

Exactly!

[rwyatt365]

[adding to my rant]

Plus, the state of mind of the managers is to treat the salespeople as mindless drones, or sub-humans. I realize that the majority of the salespeople (where I worked) were young and many didn't have a firm grip on maturity, but I didn't see that as a reason to treat them all like idiots. Some of those young people could have taught some of the managers a thing or two about being "grown-up".

When I got to the point of managing my own store, I tried to treat everyone as if they had a brain (until those that didn't, proved it to me). It made for an easier, more relaxed workplace. Of course, my district manager didn't agree with that philosophy and so tried to sabotage every effort of mine to create a rational workplace (hooray for power struggles). So much so that he demoted me back into the salesforce because of a silly mistake that I made in an inventory (nothing lost, or stolen - just miscounted and overlooked by me).

[Max T]

	Originally Posted by Monte314 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Technical marketing, yes; sales, no.

Agree- our analytical bent should favour the selling of more complex goods.

jisnowhere- the first thought going through your buyer's mind, beside the utility of the product, is whether they trust you.

Juxtapositioning INTJs with the typical shiny smiles of E salespeople can, in certain selling situations, count strongly in our favour. Our INTJ personality positions us in the buyer's mind as being trustworthy against the buyer's benchmarked salesperson stereotype.

But guess there's a slight catch 22- technical salespeople typically don't use shiny smiles (they just know both the client and the product's facts inside out).
So you'll either excel but become bored in selling simple business-to-consumer products, or perform OK but be more occupied by business-to-business selling.

	Originally Posted by rwyatt365 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The only way I survived as long as I did was to make the whole thing a game.

Yes- that's probably our N coming through.
jisnowhere- if you want to make a game out of it, perhaps read Robert Cialdini's book "Influence" and construct a way to apply a few of his influencing forces.
Providing you genuinely believe in the product, a little psychology isn't unethical...

Otherwise, I don't know the commonality between Kinesiology (uh?), teaching, sales and law, but there'll be an overlap.

	Originally Posted by jisnowhere To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	ive got friends saying i should give it [sales] a shot

Beware of well-meaning friends' suggestions- they don't have to live your life after their idea.

[rara avis]

If you want to make a little money and work in a bookstore all day- well, those two are pretty mutually exclusive...
But have you thought about getting your MLS? There seems to be a surprising amount of variety in the librarian career field.

[anamatria]

Hello,

Although I am an ESTJ and might not to be able to completely relate to your predicament, I am in sales and I loathe small talk.

I was also raised to believe that soliciting sales was rude. Thank you very much, Dad.
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Either way, Account Management might be a good fit for you. Its less soliciting, and more issue resolution. Its a good middle ground between sales and customer service. The difference is that you make more than customer service, and sell less than sales.

Good luck!

[SeaCzar]

I DESPISE sales people, and, as I live by the Golden Rule, would never be a sales person myself. I keep my office door locked, and dare anyone to knock to try to get in (I have a PhD in Nasty). If I want something, I am smart enough to find it on my own, thank you very much.

[ManthaJay]

I'm actually a very good salesman, but it involves putting my mask of normalcy and charm on. It was exhausting, and I needed twice as much time alone to recover as I do now in an academic environment. I have to admit, however, that retail is how I learned rudimentary social skills. Since I was forced to approach people, I had to learn how to have conversations longer than three sentences.

[psuedoluminary]

Read up on sale techniques, etc, make it a game- something to analyze, something to play with- I bet you could have fun that way*

[OneHertz]

You guys are talking about retail sales. Professional B2B sales is entirely different and it is great. No cold calls, no bothering people, etc. You only talk to people that have expressed interest to talk to you.

[goofychick]

	Originally Posted by rara avis To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	If you want to make a little money and work in a bookstore all day- well, those two are pretty mutually exclusive... But have you thought about getting your MLS? There seems to be a surprising amount of variety in the librarian career field.

Ditto - from corporate librarians to grant writers to working for NFL films, a library degree opens many doors these days. Supposedly there will be a dearth of librarians in the near future as many will retire over the next decade.

If you are also interested in the field of law, you could pursue the juris doctorate degree in conjunction with the MLS. When I worked on my MLS degree, I took a couple of workshops taught by the director of a university law library, and that job seemed perfect! Great pay plus she decided which workshops, trainings, etc... (if any) she wanted to do which meant she could pick her audiences or just delegate to others. And she worked mostly with intelligent beings questing for knowledge.

jisnowhere - you stated you really like to let others make their own decisions. That was a strong piece of my MLS training. We aren't there to give the answers but to show people available resources then let them decide what is best. My favorite part of working in the library was ordering books - getting to research and decide what I thought as most appropriate for the users.

Really think about what YOU enjoy. Do you like books or the knowledge? Do you want to share knowledge or just continue to gain knowledge? Do you want to share your joy of books with others? Or do you want to be behind the scenes?

[jyoti]

I did the cold-call telemarketing thing in high school and part of college, too. Ugh. Those were THE most stressful jobs I've ever held. It's not that I don't have a strong work ethic; I work hard. It's just that I don't like having quotas held over my head or memos in my inbox about "sticking to the script". I hated the scripts I was given; they seemed waaaay too pushy and opinionated, and I always had to soften it by adding my own clauses or ignoring parts of the script. I just didn't like backing people into a corner. I lasted 6 months in one telemarketing job and 2 months in the next and I was relieved as hell when I left
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[boldbidder]

When I was in undergrad one of the many part-time jobs I had was telemarketing. I hated it, but I was damn good. When I would call someone and they would flip out and get belligerent it never bothered, in fact many times I could flip them with how calm and professional I would remain. Other people were naturally more talkative, but they would genuinely get their feelings hurt whenever someone was rude. So being detached and unemotional helped a ton, but the consistent calling and talking to strangers was painful. With commissions though it paid waaaay better than any campus jobs so you have to way the compensation with the pain
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[Tishy]

::shiver::

Sales iz ebil.

[blckprljinju]

It was easy for me to do well in sales because I tend to listen to what they need and point out the answer and they usually seem really happy with their purchase... but yeah, I never really hung out with anyone from work, and I tended to do my job.

Dealing with women is the worst. I worked at Victoria's Secret for about a year... and women don't listen to you when you tell them they need a bigger size bra... you see this woman who clearly does not look like a 34DD, measure her at 38B, tell her that, and she's still going to buy 34DD, even though all her fat oozes out the side although you tell her that wearing improper size raises the chances of getting breast cancer.

I never remember any of those methods they tell me, and my superiors knew I never remembered those steps, but I delivered using whatever method I had, so in the end, my managers always ended up employing the methods I was developing and got higher sales...

they also found out that I was more introverted than I appeared, and assigned me accordingly... which took less from me... but all the superficiality associated with that store eventually broke me down...

[Lantigua]

Originally Posted by jisnowhere To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

So i thought id go into sales, in order to earn some $....Ive been there less than 10 days. I think i hate it. I'm such an introvert. I have great friends, 4 of them lol, but other than that, i just dont care to get out and meet people, and this job entails that i not only meet people, but meet them, and convince them that i have something good for them. I believe in the product, thats not the problem. Its just that i have a strong bent for leaving others to make decisions for themselves. I hate for people to give me unsolicited advice and I hate to offer it to others. Have any of you had any experience and/or success in sales?

Hi everyone. I'm new here and in due time I'll post an introduction in the intro sub-forum. Now, to the task at hand.

I have had pretty good success in sales. I even did face-to-face cold call sales, you know, the door-to-door type. I actually enjoyed it because it allowed me to be a completely different person during working hours. Its funny how as soon that my work day was over, I quickly reverted to my old introverted INTJ self.

As an introvert, I know how you feel.

The following is what I did to effectively remove my shyness and be able to do my job.

I realized that as a salesperson, potential customers don't see me as me. To them I'm just the XYZ salesperson. That dichotomy, if you will, of the 'real' me vs. the 'working' me helped me (excuse the redundancy) get out of my introverted shell.

Think of it this way, introverted people are better at communicating through mediums where we don't really expose our own selves to the element. This 'shield' that protects us and allows us to express our views in the most comfortable and detailed manner possible can take the form of the internet, or the phone; the idea is not having face-to-face contact. The beauty about sales is that once you realize that as a salesperson your customers don't see you for who you are, but rather as the salesperson of XYZ product, that puts you in the same psychological state that makes you feel much more comfortable when communicating through the internet.

The rest is mostly psychological tactics that you use to get results.

For example, there are the basics of sales like smiling, building rapport, etc. These are the easy and obvious tricks. Smiling is pretty straight forward, but building rapport is only a matter of asking a few questions about themselves since that's the topic most people like talking about the most. Regardless what they answer, you should say something like "oh really, what do you mean by that?" or "oh wow, why?" In the mean time smile, keep good eye contact, and then laugh. Once you get them to laugh, they are hooked and now you can throw in the pitch.

Once you go into the pitch, as you start to ask the questions to discover their hot spot or interest regarding the product you are selling, always shake your head up and down and finish every question with the word right. By shaking your head up and down, it subconsciously make people want to agree with you and, additionally, finishing every question with the word right limits their answers to either yes or no. Add to that the smile, the good eye contact, and you have full control of the situation.

Once you get them to agree that they have a problem, offer a solution biased towards your product. Now, when you notice that their interest in your solution peaks (for example, their eyes dilate, or they show a grin or smile as you explain to them the solution, or their head tilts to a side, etc) go for the close.

Every time I went for the close -keep in mind that I was selling a service-, I always cut eye contact, shifted my body to the side so they stare at the side of my face, and I would say "how do you spell your name?" and boom, once they say that; they are buying the thing. At this stage, whatever you do, don't look at them. I don't know what it is about people, but its easier for them to say no to you if you look at them; but if you cut eye contact and go for the close, they just go with the flow.

After this, they might throw a few objections, you overturn each of them by reestablishing eye contact again, smiling, nodding your head, and quickly cutting eye contact and proceeding with the close. As soon that you over turn one or two objections, change the subject of conversation to anything other than the product, the sale, or your company. As you do the paper work or you register the item they are buying or whatever you do to close the sale, get them to talk about themselves and when they finish, always ask them "why?"or "oh really, so what happened?". Laugh and smile some more and voila! You're done, sale is closed.

You thank them for such a wonderful chit chat, smile a bit more, and say bye bye and cut eye contact. As soon that that happens, they are gone happy with the purchase.

It sounds like a lot, but its not. Once you do it a few times, it comes naturally.

The funny thing is that this helps a lot in any social situation as well. At least it has helped me at times that my INTJ personality doesn't really lend it self to certain situations.

Hope this helps!
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[myusername]

I really enjoyed working in sales to be honest and was also quite well regarded within the company I worked for. However I did have a variety of specialized products to offer, each suitable for a different type of situation and this required more thinking/effort on my part than just giving the usual corporate spiel.

I would consider my "sales technique" to be quite INTJ -

Learn everything about the product and its application
Do the same for competing products
Learn everything about what the customer wants, needs and can afford
Do the math and explain reasoning to customer
Customer either buys or not.

However at no point would I engage in any kind of "selling" as directed by the boss, courses etc - I couldn't pull it off and it never really seemed genuine. The majority of people appreciated the no BS technique and this was reflected in my pay packet!

The idea that some people would find approaching customers difficult strikes me as odd. If you're that independent and require no "external validation" why are you worrying what the customer thinks of you? I'd happily start a conversation with anyone walking through the door - if it turned into a potential or realised sale, cool. The only time the "I'ness" kicks in is if I've got something personal to me riding on the result of the interaction.

However as noted by a poster above, working in a public facing role did improve (change?) my I'ness in day to day life.

[budah]

Originally Posted by jisnowhere To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

yeah...its 10 am here..i was supposed to be tracking down potential clients 2hrs ago...ive got friends saying i should give it a shot..but im not the type to be pursuaded much, for long anyway.. daisy/monte - i know what you mean..i dont think this is going to work..man..this sucks..here i am at 33, have a BS in Kinesiology and a Masters Degree in Teaching (hated teaching) and feel lost as a polar bear in jamaica... ...Am i the only one to feel this way???

Most definitely not! I'm in the exact same boat and am rethinking a career more related to Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.

I have to wear the "mask" to meet with clients. I hate the fake "you're helping people" routine. Allowing big wigs to choose a product that increases there bottom line is not my idea of "help", because if I were to leave, will my presence have made a difference? I feel like I'm just a paper pusher. With no challenge to get me even remotely interested. And I'm not on a commission system.

Can we share the polar bear? It's looks like a cozy symbol...
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And so much for that degree in graphic design and gaining experience in marketing...I find I'm no longer fond of either!

[Olympics2010]

Quite frankly, I don't think that sales is for INTJs. No need to prolong the inevitable, which is most likely the truth that there are better avenues for you out there, including better opportunities to make good money. You start by getting specific about what think you would like in a job, whatever they may be. I tried sales and I walked out with little regret after just one or two days, and I would never try something like that, cause, like you, I have a tendency to think that it is wrong for me to do it. And if there are other jobs out there in which I have to do less worse things, then why not seek them out. Not that I agree in particular with any job that's out there. But one has to make a living.