Have you ever counted the number of letters in salesman, salesperson or even the words, sales or selling? Lets see what do we have here; salesman = eight letters, salesperson = eleven letters, sales = five letters and selling = seven letters. Now folks this is not a trick question, count the letters yourself. Salesman is Not a four letter word and it never was.

Why does the word salesman bring up negative images and connotations in our minds? I mean there are so many professions which are so much more negative if you think about it; we have politicians and lawyers, some of whom are actually both lawyers and political figures; go figure.

Yet we often hold these professional parasites and podium pushers in such high esteem? But why do we hold salesmen in low esteem? After all what is a salesperson anyway? Is selling a bad profession where only bad people make their money? Of course not, salesmen and saleswomen for that matter are essentially problem solvers, listeners and relationship builders all of which we could use more of in this world right?

Indeed and yes there have been some scoundrels amongst those in sales, but really for the most part America should indeed be proud of the sales forces out there and not diminishing their value to our civilization. Without them where would we be, as many business, jobs and products would not be so widely available in our society. Please consider this in 2006.