Selling is important. Did you know that?

For a moment I am going to assume that you didn't and ask you a few questions. What do you do for a living? You have a job? How does the company that you work for generate the revenue to pay you?

What I am trying to get at in a rather unsubtle way is that sooner or later down the chain of commercial activity, somebody has to do something which others are prepared to pay for; more concisely, something has to be sold.

If you are grammatically inclined, you'll notice a passive verb form in that last remark. Let's make that an active one instead; someone has to sell something.

If you doubt the importance of an active sales culture, you might reflect on what happens to a country when selling is prohibited, and the reverse, where selling is part of the national makeup.

I'm referring of course to the difference between such countries as the former USSR and the good old US of A. In Russia there was no commercial advertising. It wasn't necessary, they had trouble feeding themselves; no need to spend money encouraging people to buy consumer items.

By contrast, the US has more of a problem with obesity than starvation. It is the quintessential home of free enterprise and the activity of sales is a central part of what made the economy strong.

Politicians, who have little or no experience of forming and running profitable enterprises, tend to restrict commercial freedom, but ultimately it is the people who sell who start the process of bringing in the money that the rest of us live on.

Whatever your career, you are better equipped to advance yourself if you have some competency in selling. You need to be able to convince other people of your ideas; that too is selling. If you can't you will spend your life doing their bidding.

Selling brings in contracts, jobs, orders, work; without work, you don't need workers.