“As a sales professional can you REALLY turn it off on the weekend or after hours?”

This was a question recently posed in the Sales Playbook! group on LinkedIn.  (It’s a closed group so no link.  If you’re really interested, join the group as it’s a good one.)

It’s a US-centric group so, as you might imagine, most contributors fall into the ‘always on’ category. (That’s my confirmation bias on show there, folks.  I’m a regular one-man echo chamber.)

I did contribute to the discussion about half way through saying “When I started out in sales (all those long years ago) I was very much like most of the people who have responded so far – radar always on, looking and listening for the next opportunity.

However, within a very short time my friends and family got on my case and told me to ‘switch it off’ when I was out with them. Their main complaint was that we were all there to have a good time, not to see me practice my tradecraft.”

Would good Teachers make good Salespeople?

It’s not such a stupid question, is it?  Our local schools are very keen on their pupils undertaking work experience as part of their education.  For the last two weeks I’ve been responsible for a 14 year old girl who, I was told, ‘wanted to work in sales and marketing’.

I’ve tried to make it as realistic and meaningful as possible because I see little point in doing otherwise.  Towards the end of the fortnight, one of my colleagues said to me that he thought I would make a good teacher.

Once I had stopped laughing, we talked around the whole subject of teaching (he thought about becoming a teacher a few years ago and I actually did a little when I first finished college.)