Changing the foot-in-the-door image of the sales person

Sales people must lie somewhere between lawyers and journalists for being despised in the popular mind. And it is the perception that they are slightly dodgy, if not quite the same as door-knocking proselytizers, that was behind Georgina Charleton establishing the Sales Institute of Ireland.

Ms Charlton has her own evangelical mission - to raise standards in the profession and provide it with academic qualifications.

She is fighting against an impression, created in fact and fiction, that it is a disreputable profession, arguing that it is essential to the economy.

The institute's motto is Veritas Honorque (Truth and Honour). With the huge growth in the telesales sector, to name but one burgeoning industry, the numbers in the area are rising rapidly. According to an Economic and Social Research Institute/ FAS survey, the numbers employed in sales will increase to 146,000 by 2003, up from 117,000 in 1997.

"One of the things about selling is that it is a tough job. A lot of people do not like taking rejection, because it is tough. It is easy to be a marketing manager and have a budget," Ms Charleton says.

But some sales directors, she adds, earn more than the chief executives of companies. The average salary for a sales executive is £24,000 (€30,474) and for a sales director, £57,000.

She equates the sales role with entrepreneurship, and points out that 80 per cent of US chief executives come from a sales background. Unsurprisingly, entrepreneurs also figure high in her estimation.

After three years, the institute, with two full-time staff, has moved from Baggot Street down the road to more spacious offices on Pembroke Road. Ms Charleton, who lives close by on Merrion Street with her husband, Mervyn, a property consultant, is establishing a certificate course in sales in Cork, having already set up one with the Dublin Institute of Technology along with a part-time diploma course in professional sales practice.

The institute's other main activity is organising monthly seminars for its members. She is also compiling a sales pack for distribution to schools and colleges, to encourage recruits to the industry.

But surely sales people are born and not made? Not so, she says. Although interpersonal skills and tenacity are important, she believes in the theory of selling. "I think there is a need. If you look at the past, with issues like misselling and churning, there was a certain lack of professionalism in selling."

She distances herself from marketing now, saying it creates brand awareness, but it is the sales-force which wins the contracts. She is even dismissive, using the expression that "roast duck does not fly in the window". "People do not come knocking on the door. You have to go out there and win the contracts."

The best analogy she has heard is that "marketing people might chat you up, but it is sales people who take you home".

The sales certificate course focuses on the regulatory environment, putting proposals together, listening skills, questioning and closing the deal. "It really is a meritocracy. The results speak for themselves in terms of the new business you are going to bring in and in terms of customer retention levels."

Originally from Churchtown, Ms Charlton went to school in Alexandra College before doing an arts degree and a diploma in business studies in UCD. Both her parents, who were involved in the "rag trade", as she describes it, supplying clothing to retail outlets, are dead which made her feel she "had to paddle my own canoe and find work".

Following a FAS course in advertising and marketing, she says she had no clear idea of what she wanted to do. She found her way to the Sunday Tribune sales department, asking for a month's trial. She was given the advice always to follow through on her promises. "I was thrown into the deep end of selling. . . I learnt how to sell professionally, I learnt the value of the customer," she says.

She remained in the job for five years but increasingly came to the realisation that sales was not valued as a profession. It had hardly been mentioned, she says, when she did her diploma and her FAS course even though it was crucial in business.

She talks of the image the sales person has as a dishevelled character from The Simpsons or a flashy BMW-driving "Jack-the-lad" type.

"I do not think it had the respect it deserved. There was a perception that it was something not to be proud of," she says.

The institute was founded in November 1995, after she contacted and discussed the issue with some of the big industry sales representatives. It now has 900 members, including 67 corporate members. Its code stipulates that members must not mislead customers, that the information they gather is confidential and that they must recognise customers' needs.

"You are really running a small business. I really have an appreciation now of what that is like," she says.

A move towards "consultative selling" involves sales people adopting their products to customer needs. "It is very fulfilling when you have people coming back to you for repeat business who are pleased with your service. But the actual practice of going out and being able to take the setbacks, I think that gives you confidence."

With little difference between price and quality of product, companies look to sales to make a difference. "What gives them sustainable, competitive advantage is a quality sales force and the relationship management with the customer," she says.