Real salespeople sell. They are not order takers. Account reps are typically those individuals who are allocated to processing sales that come in over the phone or online with no real effort. The sale is usually already done by advance materials that are already in circulation through some media—whether online, in print, or retail format, and a customer buys the product because they found it somewhere and just needed somebody to take the order.

Now, most reps will tell you they work really hard to make those sales, but for the most part someone is ready to buy a product that already has legs. The buyer just wants someone to confirm what they already think they know about a particular product or service. The consumer may have a couple of questions to be clarified about the purchase. And then the account rep takes their payment information. Not to oversimplify the sales process, but true salesmanship is a craft that involves more than order taking.

According to Steve Young—who is a "sales solutions architect," the CEO of esm4, Inc., and founder of The Sales Standard, a next-generation sales solutions company—sales professionals are among business owners' greatest assets. These talented and tenacious people advance the frontline of organizations, and their work is vital for realizing and maintaining greater and greater success. Unfortunately, individuals like this are becoming increasingly harder to find. The occupation of selling is changing through the influx of sales representatives into the market place.