The Sales History Podcast

We Are Selling Ideas, right? Here’s 400 Years of “How To” Advice
We Are Selling Ideas, right? Here's 400 Years of "How To" Advice Sales - the most brilliant minds in the profession view our responsibility as "selling ideas'. Those brilliant minds date back to the 1600s and Sir Francis Bacon, the late 1700s and Benjamin Franklin,...
Why Does Sales Exist The Way It Does – And Should It?
Why Does Sales Exist The Way It Does - And Should It? Our version of sales recruiting, sales training, dedicated territories, quotas, salary + variable compensation plans, even sales kickoffs all began between 1890-1920. The process designs, compensation...
Salesman’s Creeds – The “In Thing” of the Early 1900s
Salesman's Creeds - The "In Thing" of the Early 1900s Salesman's "Creeds" - There was a concept that started popping up around 1905, spreading to individual companies, industries, and eventually to entire cities by the 1910s. Established to change the perception of...
Don’t Be A Dunderblitzen – a Sales Leadership Parable from 1909
It's the story for so many - great at selling, promoted into leadership without training or a holistic understanding of what the role actually is. In today's episode, I share a parable written by Worthington C. Holman in 1909 about a medieval military leader named...
The History of Email – in Sales & Marketing
I went digging...into the origins of email as a communication medium. Along the way, I found a ton of really interesting timeline milestones that are amazing, interesting, and in some cases pretty funny. So, in this episode, we explore those milestones - from...
The Rise of the Roman Empire – and the Deplorable Salesperson
The Rise of the Roman Empire – and the Deplorable Salesperson Can you imagine - a profession so deplorable that those in it were rounded up and murdered? As crazy as it sounds, I found that it actually happened during the Roman Empire B.C. In an incredible find, I...
The Nine Traits of a Successful 1913 (and current) Salesperson
Sales tips from 100 years ago If sales has changed so much, why haven't the #salestips? Reading a collection of the top sales tips in 1913 - and I swear I was reading a collection of the top sales tips today. There's no conflict...at all. What's presented as...
The Origins of “Modern” Sales Management
The history of sales management: There's a direct correlation between the difficulty of the selling environment and the need for optimized sales management. There was a lag between the modernization of sales and the modernization of sales management. In this...
What History Got Right: Setting Sales Quotas
“It is far better that the quota be right than that it be simple.” – 1926 Something odd struck me as I was investigating the origins of quotas and variable compensation. 75-100 years ago, organizations did MUCH MORE with MUCH LESS data. Today, not sure anyone could...
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