In days long ago, before I heard the patter of tiny feet and decided to adopt a more bohemian approach to life I earned a living from selling.

It was probably the best career option I could have gone for, because over the course of my sixteen year stint plying my trade I learned more about the human psyche than I think I could have gleaned from any text book.

When you are engaged in the selling process (at either end) you see people at their best and possibly their worst. They can feel threatened, undermined, insecure, exhilarated, arrogant and aggressive .. but you’d possibly need to question your competence as a salesperson if you saw all those emotions in your prospect during your first presentation.

And one unequivocal truth I soon noticed was this: human beings can be (and for the most part are) strange and complex characters, and this is no more evident than in the attitude I have witnessed over the years when I mentioned my then profession.

Sales seems to be regarded as the career path of the confidence trickster, the scammer, the wide boy. In fact I’d go so far as to venture that many would rather not associate the word “profession” with “sales”. And for some reason it seems to be an attitude more prevalent in Britain than most other parts of the world; we see sales people as out to part us from our life savings, or hell bent on signing pensioners up for replacement windows at ten times the market value.

Anyone who has spent a few years engaged in sales will tell you it’s actually the art of developing efficient and mutually beneficial commercial relationships.

It’s not about trickery, manipulation or deceit. Well .. it might be if you’re not really that interested in repeat business but I can assure you that the best sales people make life as easy as they can by establishing platforms that auto-provide .. i.e. they plant the seed of trust as quickly and firmly as they can with their customer to ensure their return.

It does however astound me that the same tired techniques are being adopted that we saw thirty years ago. I am of course referring to cold calling. I really have no idea what the expected  conversion rate is for cold callers but I’d say it must be getting towards one in a hundred; what a pitiful waste of resource and effort.

Today’s customers are more sophisticated, better informed (thanks to the internet) and very experienced. They are quick to reject aggressive forms of approach; for instance “is now a good time to talk?” will be almost certainly be met with a swift “no” but rest assured that one thing has remained constant:

People still want to buy.

But they want to buy on their terms and at their pace in an environment of mutual trust. It is up to today’s sales people to recognise this and to move with the times. Smooth talk no longer works long term, commitment to providing an enjoyable buying experience however will win hands down every time.

The correct sales process has always involved a prospective customer being asked to outline their needs; a sales proposal is drawn up based on those findings. If the proposal is rejected then the sales person has missed or misinterpreted something, and that is where he or she earns their commission.

Does this sound like a scamming process? Well if it does, maybe doctors are out to deceive when they diagnose and prescribe treatment, and perhaps solicitors are up to no good when they advise on legal maters having digested the details of a case.

It doesn’t matter what line of work you’re involved with, if you need to persuade others to see your point, adopt your ideas or approve your requests then you’re engaged in selling.

I would hazard a guess that every job in this day and age involves an element of persuasion.

“Sell” may be a four letter word, but we need to stop treating it as such and deluding ourselves that we’re close to being able to ditch it from the dictionary.

Or maybe I’m selling us all short.

I guess we can all point to times, people and events in our lives that we later credit with causing a seismic shift in our way of thinking. For me one of those times was my first job in field sales, the person was my sales manager, a lovable man who played the trumpet for the Salvation Army band at weekends and the event was a discussion we had about letting nerves get the better of us.

Now Gorgeous George was not the type of man you’d expect to see in a role of that ilk; typically I suppose these days we expect ruthless, results-oriented individuals to be leading sales teams. George was nothing like that; he was a “people person” in the truest sense of the term who instilled very early on in his team members that there is no such thing as inferiority when it comes to your fellow man.

And that worked both ways. In restaurants he struck up conversations with waiting staff and would chat for a few minutes with the vendor of a copy of the Big Issue as he handed over a pocketful of change. Similarly he explained very succinctly why nerves where often unfounded when it came to making a key sales presentation to a room full of decision makers.

“Deborah … tell me .. have you prepared for this presentation? I mean … have you really prepared? And don’t bullshit me …”

“Yes George”

“Then why are you so nervous? You know your stuff …. if you stumble a few times they won’t know because they don’t know what the “perfect presentation” should look like … you know that because you’ve written it!”

“But such a lot rides on this presentation George; I’m worried”

“OK, OK … then answer me one question …. what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Well … the worst that could happen is that I completely fluff it and we lose the deal”

“No … that’s not the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen is that one of them takes out a sawn-off shotgun and shoots you in the knee-caps because your presentation was so bad. Don’t you think? Surely that’d be far worse than us losing the deal because you fluffed your presentation?”

That was George’s skill; he instantly could bring a perspective to a dilemma you were facing that caused your angst to evaporate into thin air.

Now like many people I have laid awake at night worrying over the years. I’ve worried about relationships, about money, about work … and all my laboured efforts and sleepless nights I’ve chalked up haven’t made the slightest difference to any of the various outcomes. I still wake and avail myself of a bit advanced hand-wringing coupled with a toss and a turn from time to time, and it continues to not make the slightest difference. And then a few months ago a Facebook friend shared a nugget of wisdom offered by his first wife on the subject ….

“Worrying is like paying interest on money you haven’t borrowed yet”

I doubt anyone has brought worry into its allotted perspective quite as brilliantly as Janet Goodman did in that instance.

A little earlier today I swapped comments regarding my last post concerning positive attitudes and it led me to wonder why some people seem to get stuck in ongoing negative cycles that they can’t break. And this I find an odd quandary for me to roll around my head because I’ve worn the depression T-shirt a few times in my teens; I’ve taken antidepressants that made me feel like I was on another planet and I’ve woken up of a morning thinking “Oh God, not another day …”

But I guess the difference now is that I’ve lived to tell the tale. Several times over, and then some.

Confidence, positive attitude, call it what you will … it isn’t a skill, a quality or an attribute. It’s the knowledge that no matter what life has in store tomorrow, next week or next year I’ll deal with it. Good or bad.

I used to believe not knowing what the future held was a drawback, but now I see it as definite advantage. A canvas waiting for me to de-blank it.

I mean … what’s the worst that could happen?