Sales: A Historical Perspective

Sometimes, we get writer’s block.

This blog post represents one of those instances.

Running out of inspiration for sales-related content, I underwent an online brainstorming session. In the process, I realized sales – like any other discipline – can be approached from a number of perspectives (shout out to GCC’s liberal arts education). I decided this might make a nice blog series with which to end the semester. So here you have the first of three perspective-based blog posts: Sales: A Historical Perspective.

As fancy as this series sounds, I really haven’t come up with much to talk about from the historical perspective. History was my worst subject in high school. Nonetheless, hopefully this will get you thinking about sales historically…

I found a pretty cool infographic at Revegy.com entitled “A Brief History of Selling” that you should totally check-out, especially if you plan to continue reading, considering the following observations regarding the history of sales sprung from it:

1. Did you know that “on the morning of July 10, 1916, over three-thousand salesman, managers, and executives from many industries gathered in Arcadia Auditorium in Detroit for the first World’s Salesmanship Congress?” This portion of the infographic was the first to catch my eye. Apparently President Woodrow Wilson was the keynote speaker and “the event was the brainchild of D. M. Barrett, editor of Salesmanship Magazine.” The event’s constitution read: “(we are meeting to) promote the dignity of Salesmanship by the elevation of the rank of the salesman to a higher plane (and to) encourage contributions to the science of Salesmanship in the form of books, lectures, courses and publications.” You can read more about this event in Walter Friedman’s book, Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America, found online in PDF form here.
2. Look at that infographic again. Notice any patterns? Immediately after the congress, Salesmanship boomed, but so too did the negative “car salesman” stereotype we’ve been discussing all semester. See how it fades over the next few decades? In the 1970s “the customer became more involved in the sales process. In the 80s salesmen began to analyze customer need and provide solutions rather than features. By the time the 90s rolled around, salesmen had developed in-depth strategy based on rigorous customer analysis. And as we have learned in class, today, we are experiencing “the age of the informed customer” where “power (has) shifted (away) from the sales person.” Now I am no chronological snob (thanks again, Grove City, for the C.S. Lewis references), but I believe the field of sales has improved over the years, honing-in on the focus that begets success: the customer.
3. A second pattern discernible from our infographic is the improvement of technology over the years. A number of theories could be drawn from this observation: like we’ve said in class: modern technology has given customers access to information they’ve never before had, and thus the saying has gone from “caveat emptor” to “caveat venditor.” So perhaps it is the improvement of technology that drove the improvement of sales. Let it be remembered, however, that the source of the infographic – Revegy.com – is a technology-based company, making the inclusion of tech necessary for the advancement of their product. As a free-marketist (if there ever were such a word), it seems to me that both the product – technology included – and the process of selling the product have improved to meet demand. Self-centered mankind being the customer, it is no wonder supply grows more and more customer-oriented every day.

In summary, modern Salesmanship was born in 1916 and has been growing ever since. In full stature, sales will be a customer-oriented creature, and this trend represents not only the field of sales, but the markets as a whole. The direction of our markets leads me to questions about the direction of society. Is this self-centered trajectory really something we want to feed? But that’s another perspective – ethics – and something to deal with through another blog post in this series born of writer’s block.