Sales Stigma: The Job India Loves to Hate.

The most important first step in earning money, whether you are selling a product or offering a service, is having a customer. Customers are the result of leads generated, and leads are the result of the work done by the sales team in a company. Not all leads turn into customers; some remain part of the audience. This audience, in turn, builds the company’s popularity and word of mouth. You may argue that creating an audience is also the job of the marketing team, and that is true, but not necessarily in every case. What we can conclude is that sales and marketing share a common first step. Knowing that sales is vital for bringing business, why do people often hide their role? Why does a social stigma around sales still exist? On the other hand, marketing is creative, with the same goal of generating an audience, while the sales department has one more step: identifying potential leads and converting them into customers.

This blog isn’t about comparison of status you get with sales and marketing department. Imagine, you are a homebaker and you have business of creating cupcakes and selling it. The first step you will do is create an Instagram account with username suggested by ChatGPT. Then follow further steps by posting about it, keeping status and sharing about your small venture on WhatsApp, Facebook using posters made on Canva, or by some AI. But that itself won’t create the brand credibility, what you need is trust factor to show. So the next step you know is you will give cupcakes for tasting to your neighbours and relatives, calling up people and contacting telling them about you, creating a word of mouth and you might sell something with less profit, to create customers at first. This isn’t marketing, this is creating potential leads. Sales is not like the mythically defined as doing calls rigorously or maybe it’s somewhere. But that doesn’t mean sales person have to go through undermined status and bullshited and mistreated all along. I think now it’s clear what’s the central POV of this blog.

Most of the articles, when you search show about benefits like the fair side of the job. It indeed is the most important skill required for any business or even when it comes to generating views online. But to look over the other side, this is from a The Hindu article, which reports a case in Kerala where two employees were allegedly beaten with a waist belt and made to walk like dogs for not meeting their sales targets.

This article further states that,

“After taking statements of employees of the firm, including of a youth reportedly being ill treated in the visuals, sources in the Perumbavoor police said the visuals were taken by a former employee whose service had been terminated.

The youth welfare board on Saturday also sought a report on the incident from the District Police Chief of Kochi City. Board Chairman M. Shajar exhorted members of the public to react in unison against such cruelty, saying that anti-social tendencies had no place in society.”

Such situations don’t just end quietly, they spark serious backlash like this. The fallout was swift; Labour Minister ordered a probe, youth groups protested, and the community demanded accountability. This raises big concerns about sales job pressures and their toll on employees’ mental well-being.

Moving beyond that Kerala incident, I went through some Quora reviews from people actually working in sales. One user writes about his sales experience as dog shit, where a human has no personal life, no holidays for Diwali, and now at 30 he’s peacefully chasing his passion after leaving the job. Another in his thirties, with seven years of experience, talks about how managers are selfish enough to think only about profits regardless of market conditions. He wrote, if you need a peaceful life, don’t ever go into sales. The last one I wanna share with you is this:

It doesn’t only target one’s worst experience, it speaks for the identity that salesmen have got over the years in our country. Similarly, most Reddit users complain about work pressure, improper life balance, losing all self-esteem even after working long hours. Despite all of it, the man/woman working in the industry gets the low status virtue, that they often hide their roles. Do you really wanna work in a job where your identity is demeaned based on company’s profit and manager mood all because of societal stigma to the role? But where is this all coming from?

History of Sales: One might have missed polio drops, but no kid has ever missed watching a guy in formals with tie and nerdy spectacles, carrying a huge backpack like he has a bomb in there. Offtopic, I really thought he is gonna hostage us. That guy sells encyclopedias door to door, pitches like a kid will fail without it. He was doing his job, but the image it has left has created the identity and now it’s a stigma very hard to erase off.

This example from 2022 gives some indie news of how employees are getting treated in companies that show 22,000 million dollars as their revenue. I’m stating a few points out from this Byju’s exposé for you to get an idea:

• 26 salespeople (18 current, 8 former) reveal 72+ hour weeks, no lunch breaks, no leave even for sick family.
• Managers shout, pit employees against each other, force 7-day weeks — one called it “daily mental torture.”
• Pressure to mislead poor customers into loans they can’t afford just to hit targets.
• First-gen grads from low-income homes endure it fearing job loss in tough market.
• Company claims “zero tolerance” but workers from Bengaluru to everywhere say it’s slave-like conditions

It leaves my mind in thought that:

DOES SALES EMPLOYEES ABROAD TREATED SAME?