This one goes out to everyone in sales (which is all of us).
The choices we make today will shape our industry’s reputation tomorrow. It’s not just about sustainability, although you know how critical that is. I want to challenge you at the highest level to sell like your work matters, because it does.
Danny Rosin, CAS
Board Chair, PPAI
Here are some suggestions to give us all a jolt as we crush Q4 and charge into 2027 with an upgraded experience at The PPAI Expo and a healthy disregard for coasting.
1. Sell like your kids are watching – they are. Would you be proud explaining who made it, how it was made, what it did for the client and why you recommended it?
2. Your reputation is being built one recommendation at a time. Every PO quietly answers the question: What kind of salesperson are you?
3. Turn suppliers into partners, not just producers. Be vulnerable and share your client’s information, budget and goals, and watch better results be the outcome.
4. Give the client something better to measure than units and price. Conversation. Connection. Participation. Pride. Behavior. Belonging. Impact.
5. Stop confusing high margin with the best outcome. Sometimes the smartest sale makes a client look brilliant, the recipient feel something and the salesperson a little less money.
6. Responsible sourcing shouldn’t live naked and afraid in the sustainability department. It should live in every salesperson’s brain.
7. Don’t sell landfill with a logo on it. If nobody wants it without the logo, adding a logo probably isn’t going to improve matters.
8. Make giving back and social impact part of your idea. Purpose is much more powerful when it is designed from the beginning.
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9. Cheap has a hidden price tag. Someone, somewhere or something usually pays for that extra 38 cents you squeezed.
10. Trust compounds faster than commission. The sale you walk away from because it isn’t right may be the reason the client calls you for the next 10 years.
11. Create case studies, not order histories. If the story ends with we delivered 5,000 things on time, you probably haven’t reached the interesting and important part yet.
12. Be referable. Ask yourself: Was this work good enough, thoughtful enough and original enough that the client will tell someone else about us without being asked? This is the best type of advertising.
13. Think beyond the recipient. Who made it? Who shipped it? What resources went into it? Where will it end up? Who benefits because it existed?
14. Make money and make an impact. These aren’t opposing ideas. The future belongs to businesses smart enough to figure out how to do both.
15. Do PPAI Pyramid Award-worthy work. Not because you need another piece of hardware on the shelf, but because award-winning case studies usually begin with solving something meaningful rather than selling something available.
16. Leave the industry better than you found it. The ultimate test might be whether the next generation, including our own kids, sees this industry and thinks: I want to be part of that.
Very few will remember our monthly sales numbers. But they will remember the trust we earned, the choices we made, the people our work helped and whether we left this industry more respected than we found it. Sell accordingly.
