I want to go into sales because they seem to earn a shit ton of money.
Are sales folks proles? Labor aristocracy?
Would I be a class traitor for selling something and earning, like, 10x more than the artist/engineer/ laborer who makes that thing?
I want to go into sales because they seem to earn a shit ton of money
What, I don’t get it?
Unless you’re selling high priced items you are unlikely to make a shit ton of money.
I detest sales weasels for the manipulative exploitve nature of their entire field.
Not all sales people fit the caricature of some slimy liar.
Sales is one of the few professions that compensates people’s skills and hard work proportionately. They’re not ceos who manage people like livestock.
I think there’s an argument to be made that actively manufacturing a need to consume a product that was previously unnecessary purely to create profit is somewhat manipulative. The things I need usually don’t need to be actively sold to me, on account of how I need them.
lmao at dressing up manipulation and deception as “skills” utilizing “hard work”. sales people aren’t compensated for hard work. they are compensated for moving product. that can be extremely easy if one has the skillset of “lacking compunction”.
just like all cops are bastards, all sales people are all dirtbags. sure, go make that cake. just don’t think anyone else is gonna respect you for it. if they tell you otherwise, they’re selling you something.
I did b2b sales so I might be biased. Have long since left.
Most of my job was difficult as I needed to identify a business’ needs to understand if the product I was selling would work for them, or would work better than a competitor’s product (across many dimensions such as lead times, service, and price). Then I would try and sell it to them. The pitch was just educational because I had to represent the products honestly. Manufacturing inputs cannot be lied about and the relationship would hopefully be long term. The job was technically and socially demanding, and while it might not exist as a “sales” role in a communist mode of production it will definitely still be needed to facilitate production.
lmao at dressing up manipulation and deception as “skills” utilizing “hard work”. sales people aren’t compensated for hard work. they are compensated for moving product. that can be extremely easy if one has the skillset of “lacking compunction”.
I highly, highly doubt you’d find it easy regardless of how dismissive you are of what I’m sure you’d refer to as ‘soft skills’
just don’t think anyone else is gonna respect you for it.
Lol are you in High school? You really thought you had me with my desire to be ‘respected’
But most are because that’s how you do the job best
They don’t manage people but they sure manipulate their clients
No hate if you go into the field though. I’m fucking with a billion+ people’s personal private photos at work I have no right
Seems like you already have your mind made up about going into sales. Good luck.
Screw the class analysis on sales people. I’ll forever hate them cause they always lie to me to sell their crap. Not to mention the instant something doesn’t go according to their script after the sale was made like logistically issues, they start being incredibly rude to the point of literally screaming at me because they already closed the deal
They’re also super fake and annoying to talk to at work as coworkers
This makes perfect sense once you see the demographics (overwhelmingly white men) and learn about the job/training/hustle culture
Their job is to reduce every human interaction to a robotic mindgame to maximize their sales numbers
I’m hardly an expert on what the Marxist view is, but I don’t see why it particularly has a different class character. You’re still selling your labor.
Yeah, this seems like the correct take. Class has more to do with your relation to labor than your income bracket. We might individually have positive or negative or neutral opinions of salespeople, but their relation to labor is the same as mechanics, or shorehands, or any other occupation traditionally considered working class.
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Sales people earning a shit ton of money is a very specific niche. Most don’t earn a lot and are usually the first on the chopping block for cost cutting. Choose something you enjoy doing. I’ve rarely met someone happy in sales.
The vast majority of sales jobs exist to manipulate people into buying something they wouldn’t have otherwise bought. That’s the whole purpose of the job. Otherwise it’s just a pointless bullshit job where what you do doesn’t matter at all. Most people who work bullshit jobs come to hate them. They feel trapped because having a job where you get paid well for doing nothing is supposed to be the dream.
I think sales tends to make you a worse human being as well. The jobs tend to create a culture where lying and manipulation are not only permitted but praised. Your coworkers will celebrate screwing people over and you’ll absorb their horrid justifications for what they do.
Proletarian job that feels bourgeois
Salespeople generally convince people to exchange money for commodities (completing the C-M-C circuit for capital accumulation) and bargain to make the customer pay as much as they reasonably can for commission. We would be engaging in commodity fetishism to just wave off the marketing and sales department as “not real jobs.” One could argue that while value derives from “useful labor,” less time that a salesperson/marketer spends working is actually useful or their labor is generally less useful. Following that line of thought, some could argue that they could have a less “prole” background. That’s kind of irrelevant though. The big focus, however, is that some of their goals are more aligned with the capitalist class. Salespeople will want to sell commodities at higher prices for more of their commission, screwing over more customers on behalf of profits. Car salespeople in Amerikkka, for example, would definitely fit the role of “labor aristocrat.” They are one of the largest, most conservative groups in America that want more car-dependent infrastructure and lower wages so that they might have a larger slice of the pie in the inflated exchange of commodities. Depending on the position, role, and most importantly how much they are aligned with the capitalist class’s goals, or their class interests, sales and marketing people could be proles or part of the labor aristocracy.
You wouldn’t really be a class traitor for earning more than whoever made the thing you are selling though: just by working against your class interests.
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In general, sales people do not make all that much more than a lot of other workers. Some make a lot, but that’s usually because they land some huge customer or have a shit ton of connections that leverage into sales. It’s also a very precarious job for a lot of people. You are given a sales target for a certain period. Don’t hit that target, and you’re gone. And it’s usually up to you to figure it all out, too.
I used to work with a lot of B2B sales people. The people who made money usually started as engineers or some other non-sales role, and sold to all the people they used to work with.
Tbh sales is a pretty miserable job.
Class analysis isn’t taxonomy. It’s not about sorting each and every profession into a bucket. Ultimately, it’s about understanding how the working class can form a political consciousness and then act. Whether or not the someone who sells cardboard to UPS is a “worker” or not isn’t really something class analysis is meant to answer, imo.
This is such a thoughtful response and I feel awful for not having the mental faculty to respond to it with more clarity and thought at the moment but I absolutely need to have this conversation. All this to say, I will be back in a bit with some actual things to say, questions/concerns and such.
Sure thing. I’ve been working for while now in businessey things - not in sales, but have worked pretty close with sales workers.
The issue isn’t making more money than other workers, it’s the fact that you won’t be successful in sales if you don’t actively try to screw people over and make them waste more money than necessary
Get your bread comrade
What kind of sales? There’s lots of unethical sales jobs, if you do those idk if youre a class traitor but kind of a shit head. Then there’s more neutral sales jobs, I think you’re morally okay to do those.
Below are some Qs on the job itself. You don’t have to answer me, but you should know the answer to these questions before you take a sales job.
Inside sales? Outside sales? Business to Business? DTC? Hourly? Salary? Comission? Is the base pay ass? Is commission fair?
Are people coming to you? Are you responsible for your own leads? Can you mentally justify the product/service you’re going to have to sell to yourself? To others? Is there already a market for it and you’re just selling a different version? What would you be selling, price? Service? Would it actually be a good idea for them to buy what you’re selling? If it’s not are you going to lie to them?
If your selling products are you selling capital products? Consumables? What’s the typical sales cycle? Do they need more every week, month, year, 3 years, more? Are you selling a lot of little things, or little/big things for a lot?
Are you selling a service? Is it a subscription? Per service? Same service they already use but different or a “new niche”
Is it churn and burn, get a sell at all costs and look for the next mark? Is it slowly build a relationship and wait for a chance? In between? If you do get a customer are they likely to repeat? Will you get credit for returning customers?
How competitive is the market? Is there already a big player(s) that most people use? Are you working for the big player? Does your company have a reputation? Does your competition? Is that something thst will work in your favor or something youll have to constantly work against?
Does the company churn and burn through sales people? Are there some that stay awhile? Whats the success rate look like? Are their quotas?
Sales sucks no matter what but there are perks and you can get paid. There are a lot of sales jobs that are not worth it from an ethical stance, you’re selling something people don’t need, you’re lieing to them, your selling an unethical product/service etc.
There’s a lot of sales jobs that aren’t worth it from a organizational standpoint. It’s hard as shit to get sales, your not compensated well for them, you get abuse from management/ops. The market is saturated, your pricing isn’t competitive, there’s better products/services out that already exist.
The company I work for does B2B sales. They’re absolutely not selling anything a company doesn’t need, just the fact we might be able to do the service better. It’s a mix of pricing, service and just overall relationship building. All of our long term customers trust, and like, their sales rep and the support staff as well. You’re generally responsible for your own leads, if your lucky a sales manager will give you some. It’s basically knocking on business doors and trying to talk to someone. They also go to events which is much nicer and more effective but they don’t happen all the time.
We don’t have name rep but we compete against some companies that have a intl rep. Sometimes that works in our favor when big hat company doesn’t care about best service, but often times big company does fine and has strong pricing. I say compete but it’d hardly competitive if the big companies ever wanted any of our business they could take it.
Sales take a long time to develop, sometimes months, sometimes even years. Sometimes you get lucky and slide in when a competitor has a disaster or a company suddenly explodes in growth and needs help but most people are relatively happy with the company their already using.
So not the ideal situation, but overall pretty good. I was able to convince myself to try sales a few years ago and not have any ethical quandries about it. And our sales people who do succeed can make a grip, it just takes awhile and is hard as shit.
I wanted to die it was terrible. There were a lot of perks, but you have to be on it pretty much every day and decide to stay on it throughout the day. You need to dress up, show up, follow up, check up consistently for weeks/months/years with often nothing to show for it. Constant rejection, constant ghosting, lieing, etc. from potential customers.
Its a struggle, I gave up after maybe 5-6 months. Luckily I was able to get a different position back in the office that I’m much better suited for. One with numbers where I can wfh most of the time and don’t talk to customers very much.
You ultimately have to be super money motivated and I was not. Or just really like it, but I think you can really like it unless you already really like money.
I’m happy to try and answer any questions you might have. Im not going to be able to tell you how be good at it but l have a decent amount of insight on overall process.
As ppl have said, it’s usually a kinda shitty job. Sales jobs also don’t have the benefit of getting to complain or make fun of the company to friends so you have to be ‘always on’ or actually bought into the thing you’re selling. That some calendar app greatly improves workplace productivity is not that hard a pill to swallow if it pays the bills, but the field definitely has an athletic polo kind of vibe to it.
I don’t think Marx differentiated sales people from other jobs, but I might be wrong.
