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Cold-calling strangers to pry hard-earned money from their hands in exchange for your products? Ugh!

Fighting off circling competitors who try to grab customers right out of your hands just as you’re preparing to close? Phooey!

Pandering to fickle customers who lead you on and then buy from somebody else? Unfair!

Meeting people who ask what you do and then wrinkle their noses when you reply “Sales.” Eew!

Fighting off an endless parade of upstarts who want to take your job and work for cheap? Sheesh!

If you think sales is a low-prestige job you settle for until you get something better, you will be right. Well, you will be right for you, at least. Because, with that attitude, you will always be scrabbling in the mud with peers who consider customers to be annoying obstacles between them and their sales commission.

Yes, for you, sales is a terrible job. But, as most MANA representative members know, it can be a wonderful career.

Yes, the first six months is hard for any new salesperson. And for new salespeople who spend that first six months trying to push their products onto anyone with a pulse, things won’t get any better after that first six months.

But for salespeople like most MANA representative members, who instead take a long-term approach and spend that six months studying customers’ problems before offering any solutions, something wonderful starts to happen. That salesperson starts to undergo a metamorphosis from salesperson to trusted consultant. And what started six months ago looking like a sales job undergoes a metamorphosis from job to career.

Careerists like MANA representative members have earned customer loyalty and have no reason to fear that a stranger with a slightly lower price can steal their customers.

Careerists are just as highly valued by their employers and their principals as they are by their customers, so they are also well-protected from upstarts who seek to encroach into the relationships careerists have with employers and principals.

And there is no group of salespeople where careerists are more highly concentrated than among MANA representative members.

Because careerists like MANA representative members treat sales as a career, at the end of each decade they have 10 more years of experience and 10 more years of customer rapport — unlike people who see sales as just a job, who end each decade with the same six months of experience, repeated 20 times.