Does Generation-Y Hate Sales Jobs?

12 Comments 15 July 2012

A few weeks ago I moved down to DC to start the next phase of my life. My girlfriend, Erica, will be moving out here in the fall so I figured I would get a head start on her and get a job and apartment and all the “fun” stuff of moving to a new place.

I thought I wouldn’t be particularly picky about the next job I pick up, but it turns out there is one type of job that I’m particularly averse to:

Sales Jobs

While I’m pretty sure my INTJ personality type has something to do with it, I’m guessing a lot of millenials are grossed out for the same reasons. Here’s why I think Gen-Y hates sales jobs.

1. Sales seems dishonest. Unless you believe in the product you’d feel gross peddling it. While Apple can easily brainwash its sales associates into working for relatively low pay, businesses without a brilliant marketing team or cult like following will find it hard to recruit Millenials into their sales teams.

2. Sales is a decidedly non-collaborative profession. While I love working alone, apparently Gen-Y loves working on teams. Sales is traditionally viewed as a competitive, testosterone driven profession. Gen-Y is of the “everyone is a winner” mindset.

3. Sales jobs are more risky. Gen Y is less willing to try things they’re not already good at. The sucky economy definitely doesn’t help. When most of your pay is commission based, that barista job paying $12/hour looks much more appealing.

4. Traditional sales relies on motivation of big, cash wins. Gen-Y is all about doing things they’re passionate about. To be fair, Gen-Y loves money and spending it in hipster coffee shops (like the one I’m sitting in now), but it’s a secondary motivator.

5. Most sales jobs focus on selling, not on partnerships and relationships. This is not as obvious as it appears. Sales jobs that focus more on the language of business development and on developing partnerships and relationships have a lot more appeal than the sales-speak of “Earn 6 figures a year!” I imagine that if companies turned their sales jobs into business development positions they would be a lot more appealing to Millenials. For example, I read the book SPIN Selling and it focuses primarily on how to ask questions to determine a potential client’s explicit needs. It was less about selling and more about investigation and exploration. I became much more excited about sales after I read that book.

7. Cold-calling is gross. Gen-Y is pretty averse to regular phone calls, not to mention calling up a complete stranger and asking them to buy whatever crap you’re selling.

I’d love to hear from any Gen-Y members who work in sales. What motivates you? Why did you get into sales? Would you recommend it to others?

« Three Reasons Why Getting a Men’s Haircut Sucks

Are Time Cards Corrupting Your Company? »

http://www.jonathanvaudreuil.com/ Jonathan Vaudreuil

I’m technically Gen Y and manage nothing but Gen Y, so here’s my take on your numbered points.

1. Sales is not dishonest. The problem is that many Sales reps learn that if they promise certain things they’ll get more Sales. Worst part? Many companies state they CAN get those results, which eventually translates to a virtual promise – or worse, a guarantee.

2. Sales is non-collaborative if you want to work with your own employees. It’s very collaborative if you’re interested in working openly and honestly with your customers.

3. Sales jobs ARE riskier. Kinda. Most jobs don’t have the immediate feedback loop Sales has, which is why many Gen Y get stuck making $30K – they can’t prove they’re accomplishing anything because they’re a cog in a wheel.

4. Sales relies on people looking to make deals, not “big cash wins.” My first Sales position was 100% about the 2nd sale and beyond, because that’s when we made our money with a customer. It was about building long-lasting relationships.

5. By now you should see a trend – I’ve always focused on relationships in Sales, not selling.

6. Since you don’t seem to have a six, let me create one – Sales is a job full of constant learning. If there’s one thing Gen Y wants, it’s to be in a constant state of learning. Factor in the instead feedback loop and you have one of the best jobs to learn a lot, fast, because you have to.

7. Cold-calling is tough. I’ve met one human being who enjoyed it. One. At the same time, it’s a great way to learn how to get someone’s attention over the phone. It also gets the ball rolling while a Salesperson starts building a client-base and connections that will help get referrals and warm leads.
- DaleDavidson149
  
  Hey Jonathan,
  
  Thanks for commenting. I was hoping you’d weigh in .
  
  I’ll respond to your points:
  
  1. Sales by itself is not dishonest, but I wonder if it encourages a culture of dishonesty. It’s human nature to “game” whatever metrics are being used to measure individual performance. Unfortunately, this spills over to other areas as well. But, you’re correct and I don’t think there’s anything inherently dishonest with sales. There is that perception though.
  
  2. I think sales is less collaborative than other professions. Nothing wrong with that, but I think Gen-Y loves collaboration a lot more. Do sales people ever get rewarded as a team?
  
  3. I concur. We should probably take into account the wide variety of sales jobs though. Apple sales associates don’t make much because I think apple products mostly sell themselves. Even though the feedback loop is pretty transparent, it’s hard to determine how much had to do with the sales person and how much was marketing or other factors.
  
  4. Depends on the company I guess, but it does say something about sales as a profession when after the deal is closed it gets handed off to an account manager.
  
  5. It’s probably why you’re a good salesman.
  
  6. Everyone wants to learn, not just Gen Y. It’s a fundamentally human desire. However, I think Gen Y needs to believe in the bigger picture. For example, even though there’s a lot to learn in say…industrial chemicals sales, it’s hardly inspiring. At least at the point when you’re trying to figure out what jobs to reply to.
  
  7. I think cold calling will disappear. I’m a big fan of cold e-mailing and then following up with a phone call. I think the calling part has very little do with the actual relationship building.
  
  My post was mostly about how sales is perceived by Gen-Y. I think the language and incentive structure of sales will probably need to change in order to attract members of Gen-Y. I could be wrong though, I don’t have data to back up my claim.
  
  Thanks for commenting!
  - http://www.jonathanvaudreuil.com/ Jonathan Vaudreuil
    
    If there’s one thing that’s true in life (and in Sales), it’s that perception is reality. If many Gen Yers believe these things about Sales then it’s a career they’ll avoid. Wouldn’t blame anyone for it. It’s a tough profession.
    
    More responses:2. I will say that where I work has a team goal for each Sales team and the department as a whole. There’s more collaboration than you’d think. Sales Managers collaborate with their individual reps on a lot of things – prospecting, presentations, proposals, pipelines (uh, non-p word time), and planning (nuts!). Colleagues help one another out. Yeah, you’re not all working together on every demo or every proposal, but in general there is a bit of collaboration.
    
    3. Anything that sells itself requires order-takers, not Salespeople. Apple pays little because they need order-takers. My company pays far more because we need people able to drum up business.
    
    6. Gen Y is FAR more open about wanting to learn than previous generations. Learning often requires a mixture of taking a pay cut and being in way over your head. Those two things don’t always go over well, because I can tell you a lot of Gen Y people I interview want money AND to the experience without bringing much to the table other than an overrated college degree.
    
    7. Cold calling will disappear when it’s impossible to reach anyone on the phone and no one lets you enter their business without some kind of pass or permission. Until then it’s an extremely valuable way to drum up business fast. Even what you described is a variation on cold calling (it’s what I did when I was consulting).
    
    I’m not sure there is much of a reason to change how one pitches a Sales job, though – certain people are drawn to it. If you’re going to target people who WANT to sell then you need to offer them what they want. Collaboration, free lattes, and a Macbook probably won’t get me many top-notch Salespeople. The opportunity to grow fast, make deals, and make money gets me far better candidates every day. That’s what people who truly want to be in Sales are looking to do, in any generation.
    
    Oh, and sell something they believe in, but that’s actually Baby Boomer-era advice.
http://twitter.com/dmourey dmourey

I disagree completely with your assessment of sales and I would add that your misconceptions of sales are universally held by all many generations not just Gen Y.

Your comments are important though because these notions are what keep intelligent, capable people from looking into sales jobs — whether it’s a typical sales position (inside or outside sales), recruiting or business development. In addition, EVERY business owner, CEO and organization president is largely in sales. Are they all dishonest, money grubbing and uncollaborative? Surely some of them are but most of them are not.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I hope we get some people thinking about how cool and important sale is. As Jeff Gitomer says, “No one likes to be sold but everyone likes to buy so add value first.”
- DaleDavidson149
  
  Hi Deborah,
  
  Thanks for commenting.
  
  Most of my assessment had to do with the perception of sales (along with some knowledge of how sales works at various companies). I think sales has a public perception problem where people, especially Gen-Y, don’t think too highly of the profession.
  
  I have my own side-project/business and doing sales for my own project is way more fun because I of course believe in what I’m selling.
  
  If businesses emphasized the relationship building and problem solving aspects of sales rather than the “deals and money” part I think they’d do a lot better at recruiting.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Dale
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KQAJQUHFKVMADDZJPEXXNOQJTM boo

I am an X’er who is very close to being a Y’er pending on what age cut off you use. I have been in sales for my entire career and went to college and got two graduate degree to get out of it. Long story short, big recession came along and changing fields didn’t work out, so here I am still in sales. The money is good, but there are some things that are certainly to be expected with any sales/marketing /business development positon, especially if you hope to not be fired:

-You MUST pretend to like people that you have little or nothing in common with.

-You MUST treat everyone in the groups and positions you are selling to as a potential customer, even if you’re not on the clock.

-Related to the above statement, There is no clock in sales!

-You MUST cold-call and follow up (BTW, cold calling is NEVER going away, even though younger folks don’t like using the phone TODAY, thier older employers will FORCE them to get used to answering it, by the time they hit late 30′s early 40′s they will be answering thier phones and cold calls, just like boomers because eventually you’d get fired for constantly ingnoring a ringing phone while at work).

All of what you say is true about sales/marketing /business development positons and younger people are very correct making these assumtions. Don’t let a boomer or older X’er try and fool you! I will also add that the older folks who commented here are also not mentioning the worst issues that can arise with sales:

-Jerk sales managers that flog thier employees to get the numbers they want or the numbers management wants them meet.

-Some managers outright lying to thier underlings to get the results they want ALL the time because they have found it works well and has no consequences from above.

-Unrealistic goals that can’t actually be met, but are put in place to keep turnover high and prevent people from gaining senority and possibly residuals comissions from accruing.

-Being on call for last minute meetings because a potential sale is involved

-Travel that may have no limit and driving in your car or flying or both, ALL the time.

-No sales manager I ever had wanted me learning, on or off the job. They wanted me selling, period. A few times I made the mistake of mentioning school, continuing education, taking licensing exams, learning something from another department etc and got quite an earfull EVERYTIME. Eventually I learned to just stop telling sales managers about my “learning initiatives” and just surprise them at the end with the degree, license etc.

-If you get too old, nobody wants to hire you (much worse than other professions). Sales/marketing /business development positons have an age expiration date. I’ve seen 85 year old civil engineers, Dentists, Accountants, Lawyers and MD’s working full-time and THRIVING. How many 85 year old sales reps have you seen?

Its all pretty annoying and never stops unless you change professions. Sales sucks, the pay can be good, but if you can earn the same doing something else with career longevity, DO IT!

BTW, Jonathan Vaudreuil’s posts are dead wrong. Younger people today do sales jobs because its the highest paying job they can get. For example, imagine you went to school to be a veterinarian, but couldn’t get a position anywhere and didn’t have enough money to start your own practtice. How exciting would it be after all that schooling to be hired by another veterinary group to do prospecting, presentations, proposals, pipelining and planning to bring in clients to the practice, but NEVER getting to do any veterinary medicine in your day to day tasks; even though you make as much as the practicing vets that also work there whom are doing surgery etc?

Real story, I didn’t make this up.

Its one thing if such tasks are a PART of your day, its a whole other kind of hell to have to do it all day, everyday. This is how people end up in high paying sales positions. They have a technical background in what they are selling, but no one will pay them to do any job related to that technical background, other than SELLING!

Maybe some Boomers love sales as a profession, but thats not what we are talking about here.
- Dale
  
  Thanks for commenting. I appreciate the honesty.
  
  You bring up an interesting point about unrealistic sales goals set by the sales managers. I think this actually causes a lot of dishonesty in the sales world (or at least is what it gives it the dishonest reputation).
  
  Do you think the sales culture can be reformed and improved?
Pingback: Why Would Anyone Go into Sales? |
JB

Millennial generation here, 24 years old. I prefer sales because you can make much more money, but you have to work hard for it. Other jobs are boring and easy so you get paid less. Rightfully so. The more value you bring to a company the more you should be compensated. If all you do is customer service or tech support, surprise surprise, your job can be done by a machine or be outsourced to India, so why would a company pay you competitively? Now think about the last time an Indian or a recording convinced you to buy something? Doesn’t happen…

You are very correct that sales is for the competitive, but also those that are not afraid of rejection. Lazy or timid people do not make good sales people.
Joao

Nice article Dale. I’m gen y, with engineering degree and i’m seriously considering going to sales. I’ve got no sales exp., all i know about it comes from sales books, but i guess it will be a much better bet that to be an engineer like all other gen-y want to…today everyone can have a degree with such ease that we get paid 5€/h if we’re lucky.

Scarcity will probably mean gen-y salespeople will get huge pay, even bigger than the boomers, in a couple of decades, while gen-y engineers will compete with indians for a bowl of rice. Besides desk job is booooring!Im introvert, gen y, no sales exp. no huge social skills, but i wanna get it all sorted out so bad. I guess sales first, entrepreneurship eventually, as a goal.

“when every one rushes to one end of the boat, it’s a good idea to explore the other end”.

Cheers
Joao, Portugal
- FarRightActivist
  
  Youre another one of those losers who reckons “Indians are taking over that industry”.
  
  Heres an idea. Stop generalizing, pull your head out of your ass and stop generalizing. Retard.
http://twitter.com/JHK2012 Jason H. Kendall

depends on the product- if you get a product that companies or people need- the item sells itself and you only have to worry about customer service and making the first connects-