re: Can someone explain to me why sales can be a lucrative profession?

All the sales guys in my neighborhood seem to work 20 hours a week and spend a lot of time on the golf course. That doesn't appear to be changing.

In my world, technical sales people often become kind of an ad-hoc staff member. They are generally technical experts on whatever they are selling and are paid accordingly.

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I'm genuinely asking. I get 30, 40, 50 years ago why sales guys would earn there money. However, in today's information age why are we still paying sales reps potentially such hight salaries?

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I know this is over your mental capacity, but there’s something called quotas, and they know exactly how much money these salesmen are making their company. It is probably the most easily measurable profession in terms of performance than almost any other.

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It seems to me they are glorified order takers for the most part. Anyone can get online and find any product they want.

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How are they going to find out about the product if no one tells them about it? Just hope your potential customers shoot in the dark?

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What made me think of this is one of my clients is a hospital and I've had to research medical devices. I can find the exact specs of products online so if I were the device company why would I pay such a high commission for someone to go sell it?

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Great industry to use an example. Just go to Craigslist for all your cheap medical supplies, hand them over to the doctors, and hope for the best. What could go wrong with a dumb frick like yourself shopping for medical devices with no experience whatsoever? It’s not like you could get sued into an oblivion or anything by just winging it and not having two people who are actually well trained negotiating and talking about what product would be best for that specific patient.

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Ideal compensation to me would be mostly salary with a capped commission. That still incentivizes growth for the salesman, but I'm not paying a guy to go take the same orders over and over again.

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Then have fun losing all of your best salesmen to the competition that will properly compensate them for their work. You are an idiot.

Service afterwards is a big influencer as well. Medical wise, if you’re looking at a prosthetic or orthotic, and Hanger cost 10% more than a new upstart prosthetic and orthotic company, you go with hanger. Because they are basically a national company that you know will be around in two years if the prosthetic needs tweaking, or if the patient moves to a different city.

frick off

RND, on-premise sales. My entire team pretty much started fresh out of college.

You sound like an idiot and spend a lot of time on this site. Don’t fool people into thinking you actually have a job you incel.

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Ideal compensation to me would be mostly salary with a capped commission. That still incentivizes growth for the salesman, but I'm not paying a guy to go take the same orders over and over again.

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Plenty of products and services are incredibly similar. When you need to sell the same solution that everyone else has, you need a motivated salesman.

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OMLandshark

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Way to put zero effort into thinking about what I said. Guess what, labor roles change and like I've said 3 or 4 times I think they bring value, just not the same value as they used to.

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I wouldn't want to do it though.

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Why? It can be a great career. I work in defense contracting, get to go out on Navy ships, submarines, etc.. I work with NASA. This next weekend I'm flying in an Osprey at night to gather data with my engineers on a new technology my company developed. I work with the state department for security, the DoD on C4ISR programs and with, well, just use your iMAGAnation. It's a dream sales job.

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You are talking selling a physical product

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Yes.

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Some people sell services, such as IT consulting. In that case the specs of the product can't be determined by a spec sheet. You largely have to have a good relationship with a n account rep at a company that has a good reputation.

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I understand this is completely different. You are selling a professional service. You're doing something that others don't have the technical knowledge to do, I do the same exact thing.

Got a friend in software sales in San Fran, she makes a hell of a lot of money.

Great salespeople are invaluable, the remaining 90% not so much. A lot of turnover in the profession.