I was just having a discussion with a boss, on setting expectations with potential hires. It brought to mind a significant conversation I once had while careering.
I remember going for a interview for a digital media sales job. The CEO said "you're going to leave!," and I said, "of course, but how long would you like me to stay?," and his lieutenant said, "we don't want to hire people who are thinking of leaving," and I said "ok," and we left it at that. This was back in 2007.
If you're trying to lead your industry and you're hiring like that, that's just silly... because it means that your strategy is to hire betas/muppets. I'm sure it has made many companies rich, but it's not the sort of environment I appreciate.
Later, when I was discussing the first discussion with a colleague, she said she couldn't see me working in public relations, sales, or marketing. But those are the aspects of commerce which come most naturally to me, and that it's the structured stuff like accounting, and process control, and engineering which I find much harder - which is why I spend most of my time studying the latter.
Commerce generally bores me - it's so predictable. :) There's nothing really hard about it - except all the hand-holding. ^_^ Which boils down to tolerating people - and I suppose I have a bit of training in that.
I sell very clearly. I aggressively weed out bad buyers the same way I weed out optimistic recruits. And I hope that folks (in the industries that I work in) know that I operate like that - and that it improves their tolerance for my recommendations.
I can slowly turn the buyer's mind, but I need to be sure that it's in the buyer's best interest to buy my product. That's the only acceptable component of "believing in what you sell." Because I care about people - if you don't care about people, but you're good at sales, you probably got there by being a con.
So, pick your battles. Be known as a sales con, or as a business partner that counterparties can rely on.
