Sales as Entrepreneurship

Within any business, the selling function, the sales people, whoever they happen to be, epitomize entrepreneurship, especially to the degree they only make money when they actually sell something by actually finding a need and actually filling it.

Without sales of some kind there is no business, no entrepreneurship. Finding needs and filling them requires sales to be made. If a sale is not closed to get the business, there eventually is no business. Even undertakers and emergency room doctors at some point come to terms with demand. With no business, no income, and -- no economy! Sales produce incomes which comprise the economy. Without sales of some kind, there is no economy.

Bureaucrats may not comprehend the sales function. They may find it beneath them. And how often are "union people" ever found in sales? Bureaucrats and union people and others often struggle with common forms of sales compensation like commissions and bonuses. Many sales people only make income from commissions and bonuses. No commissions or bonuses may very well mean for some sales people no income for their labors.

Non-retained sales people produce no sales for the company. Since sales or revenue is the all important primary source of net income, non-retention leads to reduced income for the corporation.

All critics who instinctively malign corporations who pay out bonuses are invited to overcome their ignorance. Clearly, abuses do occur which can devastate any sense of equitable teamwork, especially when just good political maneuvering leads to extremely high pay for extremely low business performance of a captain responsible for a sinking ship.

But everybody should have some experience in some kind of commissioned or bonus-oriented sales. Something, anything to give them more humility, and more respect for the brave souls who make and build any prospering company and economy.

Without these risk-taking sales people there would ultimately be nothing for others to live off, and for still others to tax and then make their living trying to regulate things. Of course, sales people need others who support them. It is all a matter of team work after all. There is even a need for government to provide general support, especially common defense, fair and universal standards of exchange, and to protect the rule of law without the endless creation and abuse of laws.

Sales people can't do it all by themselves, but they deserve a lot more credit than they typically get. And the credit they appreciate most often comes in the form of bonuses of one kind or another.