Know Your Job is Sales

by Drew Holmes

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Anyone who has been in my office will tell you (other than how cluttered it is) I have a set of “rules” posted on the wall. These are general ideas and strategies to keep in mind on a daily basis ranging from such things as “Don’t be an idiot” (Rule #1) to “Don’t make your inconvenience someone else’s problem (Rule #8). One rule that is frequently misunderstood but vital for everyone to understand regardless of their chosen profession is Rule #5: Know your job is sales.

Mentioning the word sales typically creates an image of a guy with thinning hair and a bad suit coercing someone into purchasing a lemon of a used car. Guys like that that have given the concept of sales a bad name, since lying and shady deals are not what sales is really about. In reality, sales is the process by which a person with a need (customer) gets the appropriate product or service to meet that need. As the owner of Boomer Music my role in sales is fairly obvious: I help people to get the products and services they need so they can make music. But the concept of sales is much broader than this.

As musicians we are selling the value of what we do to the audience when we perform (especially since we ask them to give us their time, the most valuable resource of all). Music educators have…