The Salesman and the Chicken suit. Part 1.

For someone who comes across as a sales person, I actually dislike selling. It’s tough, difficult to scale and in most small (<20-person) companies, you see the classic 80/20 rule in full force. Almost all of the sales are generated by 1–2 people. During the dark years (2005–10), when the poverty became too consuming I would quickly get a sales job which would help me temporarily get out of some desperate fix I had gotten myself into. These jobs usually lasted less than 3 months as I would usually leave or simply get fired. Nonetheless I found the experiences invaluable as selling is a natural part of most businesses. Selling to investors, prospective / current employees, other businesses, suppliers, not-yet-believing parents / spouses etc.
There are different type of sales people (which I won’t go into here) but usually the universal metric of sales people is, well, selling. Revenue. Nowadays, people like to throw in vanity metrics but at the end it’s all about the Benjamins b...