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“It’s not about you.” That’s the first sentence in Rick Warren’s 2002 book, The Purpose Driven Life.

While that comment has profound implications for our lives in general, it is also a necessary frame of mind for a successful sales career. We can get so obsessed with earnings, sales budgets, reports, internal meetings, schedules, etc. that we sometimes take our eyes off the elements that are most important, our customers and support team members.

The need to be respected and elevated by others is a primary human need. If we focus on ourselves we can’t effectively meet this need and it will penalize us in the long run.

All of us have unfortunately seen salespeople that treat home office support employees like trash. These salespeople believe that they are the axis of their company. Without them, everyone starves.

When salespeople have an “it’s all about me” attitude with fellow team members they are guaranteeing themselves future problems. For starters, the home office people who support them will consciously or unconsciously put the needs of these prima donnas on the back burner.

These same salespeople who don’t have a clue how to work as a team are on a short leash with sales management too (and usually don’t know it). I’ve seen it a million times. When a sales manager has a problem child like this, he or she thinks, “Mark is really not able to work with the people here at headquarters and quite frankly he’s been a pain in the neck for me too. As long as he keeps his numbers at 100% or better we’ll put up with him, but the second he starts to falter we’ll get rid of him.”

The “it’s all about me” mindset doesn’t work too well with our customers either.

Customers are offended when their salesperson thinks that customers are not the most important person in the customer-salesperson relationship. Customers are never stupid; they pick up on “it’s all about me” cues such as being chronically late to appointments and a general lack of respect.

We honestly have to feel in our heart of hearts that we are subordinate to our fellow team members and our customers. Taking ourselves off the pedestal frees us to meet the needs of our customers and team members, who will then be more open to helping us further our own careers.

A classic win-win.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

Tags: career, personality

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