Career Curveballs: “You’re Not a Very Good Salesman”

This post is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers share how they turned setbacks into successes. Read all their stories here.

I had always been told I could sell snow to an Eskimo. Turns out this didn't quite turn out to be the case.

I believed this was true, especially when I was able to convince my parents that I wanted to transfer from a local community college to Taylor University in the middle-of-nowhere Indiana. And, the reason wasn’t just because my fiancée Karen had transferred the semester before.

I learned the art of selling from my father-in-law. He built a successful independent insurance agency by being able to sell, and he did it very well. During the 13 years I worked for him I learned the art of selling from him and continued to develop my native ability to sell.

I left his insurance agency, moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and started creating a consulting business working with insurance agencies on how to most effectively use the computer systems they were purchasing.

During this time I met two agency owners and was offered, and accepted, a position as a commercial insurance salesman at their growing insurance agency. Because I wanted to continue doing consulting work, we agreed that my compensation would be commission only. If I didn’t sell, I didn’t get paid.

As you might imagine, this motivated me to figure out how to bring in as many new accounts as I possibly could in the shortest amount of time. This is when I learned how to create marketing campaigns that would continually place my name in front of the right prospects.

Yet, I found selling very hard. The marketing campaigns worked. I could get in front of prospects. I was good at finding problems and creating high-quality insurance programs. But I found it very difficult to actually close the sale and pick up the check. I began to realize the selling skills I thought I learned from my father-in-law might have been more about how to support his sales process than how to sell myself.

What I always thought I was good at ended up not being true. It was a very difficult time personally and professionally.

The two owners of that agency – Jack Schreffler and Bill Cadenhead – were amazing mentors to me during this time. They were always truthful with me and did not sugarcoat the problem. They went on sales calls and tried to help and train me.

As it became clearer that selling was not a core strength of mine, they encouraged and helped me explore and better understand the skills I did have and how to best utilize them.

They could’ve fired me, and perhaps they should have. But instead, they invested their time and resources to help me. They encouraged me to focus on writing, consulting, and helping other insurance agencies improve their operational efficiencies. To this day I am grateful to both of them.

I thought my insurance career would be about helping businesses of all sizes properly protect their asset through the sale of insurance products. Instead, I was thrown a curve ball. For the last 15 years I have been able to work with multiple insurance agencies helping them utilize technology to maximize their productivity and profit.

In the end, it was for the best that I wasn't the greatest salesman. I really can’t imagine having a better job.

Photo: Everett Collection / shutterstock