The Sales Profession Has Not Changed

Years ago, I entered the sales profession in what many would deem to be “dramatically” different from its current state. 

I wore a suit daily – one of the two I could afford. I was given a company car – a baby blue Chevy Corsica we affectionately called the “Porchica”. I drove a massive southern California territory every day selling overnight shipping services. I carried a pager and knew where every pay phone was located. I’d start the day making cold calls in the office, then I’d head out for the day – on the appointments I had set, cold canvassing businesses door-to-door, then following UPS and FedEx trucks at the end of the day to see where they were making their biggest pickups – my cold calling targets for the next day. 

After grinding through the role for a year, I landed my first tech sales job back in Chicago. I made calls every day. I wore a tie every day. Signed contracts would be faxed over, and given we had just one fax machine number in the office, I still remember the sound and ring it made. When it rang, we hoped it was a contract for us. While the fax was coming through, we worried that our client would hear a busy signal trying to send theirs in.

Yeah, it was a different time. The circumstances were different. The tools were different. But every fundamental element of what makes selling selling, and what makes buying buying, is exactly the same today as it was when I started thirty years ago and when the “modern” profession of selling began in the early 1900s.

Maybe my definition of the word “dramatically” in the first sentence above or from the phrase “selling has changed dramatically” is different. Maybe my definition of the word “completely” in the phrase “selling today looks completely different than it did even twenty years ago” is different. 

While the players have changed and the rules have been tweaked, the game is the same…

At its core, what is sales? 

Let’s start by looking simply at how the role of a salesperson was defined in the first quarter of the 20th century. The definitions below are all from 1900 to 1925:

“Salesmanship is the power, or ability, to influence people to buy at a mutual profit that which we have to sell but which they may not have thought of buying until we called their attention to it.” – J.S. Knox

“In the field of commerce salesmanship is the mutually profitable serve of exchange between the producer and consumer.” – George Edward Robinson

“Salesmanship is the art of persuading people to purchase goods which will give off lasting satisfactions, by using methods which consume the least time and effort.” – P.W. Ivey

“Salesmanship is the ability to persuade people to want what they already need.” – Elias St. Elmo Lewis

“True salesmanship is the science of 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘦. Grasp that thought firmly and never let go.” – Arthur Sheldon

Would you disagree with any of these definitions? How would your definition from today differ? Sure, there are words here and there that may not perfectly align, but at its core, the sales profession, by definition, is the same today as in the first quarter of the 20th century.

With the role’s definition behind us, let’s examine the recruiting and onboarding process first to understand how the role is executed.

Interviewing and Onboarding

What typically happens when you join a new organization as a sales professional?

Much of the world still answer advertisements for open positions. Today, you’ll probably find them on LinkedIn, job boards, company posts, and their job pages. Back in 1907, newspapers and magazines were lined with open sales positions. 

You interview for the role. Much like today, the interviewer believes in their ability to select great sales candidates but probably has no idea. This quote from 1940 proclaimed that there was no more difficult position to interview for than a salesperson:

“We have studied 20,000 occupations and we find that the difficulty encountered in devising improved selection techniques for saleswork is probably not equaled in any other group of occupations.” – C.L. Shartle, American Management Association, 1940. 

You begin the onboarding process now that you’ve gotten the role and joined the organization. As a salesperson, there’s usually some specific program for you. Well, in the 1890s, companies brought their salespeople to headquarters for a new salesperson onboarding program. Pictured here is the NCR corporation’s 1894 class of new salespeople participating in their training.

The Sales Role – Territory, Quota, Compensation

Today, salespeople are most often given a dedicated territory, a quota or target for said territory, and a variable compensation plan. The foundational structures of all three of those elements are exactly the same as they were in the 1890s. 

Are we debating the best way to pay salespeople today? They indeed were in 1916 and 1917 as well, but at its core, salesperson compensation was optimally structured around salary + commissions. 

The Selling Fundamentals

Your core responsibility was and continues to be developing your assigned territory. That included research, prospecting, seeing customers, qualification, discovery, demonstration, proposing, and negotiating. 

Regarding the cold calling – you were cold canvassing back in the early 1900s, as the telephone hadn’t become very pervasive just yet. Going door-to-door, trying to get an audience with a decision-maker. You probably had a script. You likely had a playbook. And once the telephone did gain steam, companies established phone booths in their offices so the salespeople could make cold calls…in 1922! (pictured “A Salesman’s Model Work Shop”)

The objections haven’t changed…not even a little. They still can be bucketed into the same four categories:

• – Not interested
• – All set
• – Too busy
• – Send more information

These are the four from the 1910s that also served as the baseline for Stephen Schiffman’s 1988 book, Cold Calling Techniques, of which I was originally taught and used to teach. You can still categorize every single one you hear into these four categories today. The structures and response approaches are exactly the same as they were, too. Books and magazines tackled one response at a time in the 1910s and 1920s, and you would think you were reading LinkedIn posts today. 

Common Rebuttals

The proliferation of information

Buyers know more nowadays, don’t they? This is the most common argument I hear regarding the idea that the proliferation of information means salespeople are no longer as necessary as they were because they were the source a hundred years ago, and now buyers can do all the research on their own.

“Buyers know more nowadays” Thomas Herbert Russell, Salesmanship, Theory and Practice, 1910

Thomas Herbert Russell was ringing this same alarm in 1910! The idea that buyers no longer needed salespeople because they could do their own research – via the rise of mail-order catalogs and the proliferation of advertising – meant sales had to change dramatically.  I have a 1908 Sears catalog in my collection. It’s 1,181 pages long and reads like Amazon does today…just in paper form. You can buy anything! Buyers didn’t want to deal with salespeople if they didn’t have to back then, exactly the same as they feel today. 

As it turns out, the proliferation of information hasn’t made it easier on buyers. It has made buying more difficult. Salespeople re-reading the quotes above, focused on “service”, are the reason why the prognosticators have not proven correct.  

There are more buyers involved in each purchase today

The larger the purchase, the more consensus that is required. The more complex the solution, the more consensus that is required. The argument that today’s purchases require more buyers “than ever before” simply is not true. Countless articles from 1905 – 1925 talk about this challenge, not only from the lens of the salesperson, but also in the initial discussions around how to pay a salesperson. Long sales cycles meant long periods where a salesperson is required to live on just their salary. Machines used for manufacturing in the early part of the 20th century were big dollars. “A large part of our selling task is performed not with the actual buyer, but with his mechanical staff, to whom the buyer looks for recommendations.” “The process is stretched out over so long a period of time.” – G.C. Willings, Vice President, Intertype Corporation in July of 1925.

There’s a direct correlation between the number of buyers involved in a purchase, and the potential risk of making a poor decision. This is and was always the case. No change here at all…

Social Selling / Personal Branding Is New, Right?

Sorry. No. While “social” selling taking place “online” is certanly a new spin, it’s simply a more pervasive way than was done a hundred years ago. Back then, social selling took three primary forms:

1. Socially – Part 1: Salespeople in the early 1900s spent more time establishing a personal brand in the presence of their customers and prospects. Attending social gatherings. Participating in associations and clubs. Being an integral part of their territory’s communities.
2. Socially – Part 2: Salespeople spent all of their time in the early 1900s face-to-face with their customers. There were no 30-minute telephone calls, and of course there were no video calls. Seeking opportunities to spend time with their customers outside of the office was encouraged. Dinners. Sporting Events. Shows. 
3. Magazines & Books: Today, so much branding takes place on LinkedIn, via podcast, or other similar digital outlets. In the early 1900s, so much education and communication happened via the massive number of periodicals and magazines – on everything from sales, to the individual trades, the business in general. In most, articles submitted by executives at the different organizations served in a very similar capacity to how everyone is using social to brand themselves, while attempting to build credibility and familiarity with their prospects.

The Details

Salespeople need to be much more tuned to the customer today – back then, they were walking brochures.

. “The principle of injecting the ‘you’ attitude in selling instead of the ‘we’ is well known in theory but often violated in practice.” F.P. Rice in a 1925 edition of System Magazine

Due to Covid, sales has become much more “remote”. Salespeople are much less often in the office than they used to be.

In fact, the most significant challenge sales leaders have had since the beginning of the modern sales profession in the 1890’s was the fact that sales has always been remote. The ability for leaders to keep engagement high, have confidence that the messaging, positioning, demonstrating, and all other elements of the sales process were being executed correctly when they never saw their salespeople. There was no telephone conferences, no Zoom calls, no CRM, and it was rare that the sales manager would be spending time in the field with the reps.

Communication happened via weekly, and in some cases even more often, communications sent to the salespeople in the field. On a regular basis, the salespeople were required to send via wire their activity updates. And, in most cases, had to fill out paper forms and mail them in. Sales managers were in a constant state of trying to determine the best way to get their salespeople to fill out their forms, exactly how sales leaders today complain about salespeople not keeping the CRM updated. 

They weren’t having annual sales kickoffs back then, were they? 

Oh, they sure were…as early as the 1880s. Referred to as “sales conventions”, NCR had their first in 1887, which looked very similar to today’s. Pictured on the left is from a 1892 edition of NCRs communication to their sales organization in the field. In this update, the sales organization was being invited to that year’s convention, taking place in late December, but with an eye to ensuring most everyone would be home in time for Christmas.

Sales Communities are new, right?

Nope…they’ve been around since 1888 (The United Commercial Travelers Association), and more pronounced in the mid-1910’s beginning with the World Salesmanship Congress and the regional Salesmanship Clubs in 1916. Following World War 1 many disappeared, but then came back with a vengence in the mid 1920s. The number of sales community announcement in that decades magazines were endless…and in some cases, strange. Saleswomen’s organizations existed, too. The most prolific women in sales organization was called NAPS in the 1980s – the National Association of Professional Saleswomen, founded by Barbara Pletcher. 

The core of the sales profession hasn’t changed at all. 

Your sales meetings were the same. Your sales leaders and their responsibilities were the same. The rules are the same. The profession has progressed in many ways—becoming infinitely more diverse and regaining momentum in colleges and universities (where it was actually taught in the 1910s in practically every university). It’s changed here and there: technology, buyer feedback, and the subscription economy. However…

“The man who depends on out of date methods of getting business will progress about as fast as the business man who attempts to do without the typewriter, the telephone, the adding machine and the hundred other inventions in use in modern business.” – Salesmanship Magazine, 1907

Fundamentally, if our lens is and continues to be through two quotes – and we adjust to all the tweaks and tools accordingly, we can improve our craft, and maybe one day move off the bottom of Gallup’s annual survey of “Ethical Professions”.

The first comes from Arthur Sheldon in his 1911 book, The Art of Selling.

“True salesmanship is the science of service. Grasp that thought firmly and never let go.”

The second is from Arthur Dunn’s 1921 edition of his book Scientific Selling and Advertising.

“If the truth won’t sell it, don’t sell it.”

If we can hold onto these truths, and “never let go”, then Charles Holeman Smith’s quote from a 1923 edition of The Sample Case Magazine will continue to hold true:

“The day will never come when the business world can get along without traveling salesmen.” – Charles Holeman Smith, The Sample Case Magazine, 1923

What’s your verdict?

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I’m a sales keynote speaker who also teaches revenue organizations how to leverage transparency and decision science to maximize their revenue capacity. It’s what I do…teach sellers, their leaders, well…entire revenue organizations how we as human beings make decisions, then how to use that knowledge for good (not evil) in their messaging (informal and formal), negotiations, and revenue leadership. I wrote a book Book Authority listed as the 6th best sales book of all time (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦), and a second award-winning book (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳).

Reach out if you want to discuss The Transparency Sale sales methodology, or really…anything else (sales kickoffs, workshops, keynotes, the economy, history, etc.)! Email info@toddcaponi.com or call 847-999-0420.

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