A while ago, I tuned into a conversation between two of our salespeople. One of them, a relative newcomer to sales, was commenting that given the experience of his first year in sales, selling was easy.

I’ve been selling for a long time, and I have never thought selling was easy.

In earlier entries, I had talked about sales as a profession. As in any profession, it’s difficult to make a call on how easy it is until you have a lot of experience under your belt. Early success in sales can be the result of factors outside of your native selling skills.

I remember my first order was for about $10,000. I was elated. The problem was that most people in the sales department are nice, and they pat you on the back for your first sale. But it wasn’t a sale; it was an order. I just took the customer’s call and wrote down the information. The guy whose territory I had just taken over did the spadework.

The more experienced you become at selling, the higher you rise, and the more challenging it becomes. You are now up against competitors whose maturity evolved from the same torturous path that you followed to become successful. If selling is easy, you have no competition and sometimes that is the case. Or, someone else is doing the work for you. But if your product is much the same as your competitors, and the salesperson you are working against has the same experience as you, selling will not be easy.