This the third and last article focusing on selling for moving professionals by Ray DaSilva from IAM Mobility Exchange.
To get the full context, please read the original article by Steve Jordan (‘In Praise of Selling’, The Mover Magazine, June 2024 issue) where he voiced out his observation that sales training, as crucial as it is to a company’s success, sadly gets very little attention from business owners in our industry. Part one and part two of this series are available in the August and September issues respectively.
Professional Career Development
What is a profession?
“A paid occupation that requires special training or a particular skill set – one that is respected because it involves a high level of education.”
For example, a professional athlete refers to someone who is paid to train and compete in sporting events as opposed to someone who simply plays the sport. The word ‘professional’ connotes a level of formal qualification earned from experience, training, and education. Getting paid is only half of it.
In the moving industry, moving consultants receive a salary for their services, but not every moving consultant can be considered a professional moving consultant. We can apply the 80/20 rule to suggest that probably as much as 80% may not deserve the ‘professional’ designation.
We must begin by acknowledging that sales is indeed a profession; one that requires specialised training and a disciplined career development plan leading to a professional designation.
Creating a Professional Career Development Plan
According to a 2024 LinkedIn report, about 40% of organisations have mature career development programmes. If there was any reliable way to survey the moving industry, I suspect the results would point to the applicability once again of the 80/20 rule, with only the largest organisations in our industry actually implementing such programmes.
It may all seem a bit daunting for those of us that do not have our own Human Resources Department and Personnel Managers, but taking the first initial steps to set up an effective career development programme need not be so intimidating ...
Photo: Ray daSilva, IAM Mobility Exchange.
Click here to read the full story in The Mover magazine.