by rituparna chakrabortywith automation now looking inevitable there is a mad scramble to predict which jobs would last we are surrounded by debates on what should be done and how should one handle the imminent redundancies in existing skills can policies stem or redirect the drift can we predict the future and plan for same while at the top end of the skill landscape the immediate future appears to be in artificial intelligence machine learning 3d printing and data sciences at the vocational levels there is a dire need for skilled electricians plumbers carpenters welders et al however there is one career option which gets less attention and that is sales it never comes up as a career option for a newbie at dinner conversations with the familywhen i was young i wanted to grow up to be a sales person hailing from a family of doctors engineers and phds i kept my ambition a closelyguarded secret in the absence of any guidance i did not know what learning capabilities i required to become a good sales person fortunately navigating through an economics and management degree i found my way towards starting with what i always wanted to do sell from where i stand today it was probably the wisest investment i madein his book sapiens yuval noah harari shares how the art of getting along helped homo sapiens survive this long even though neanderthals were probably genetically stronger selling taught me how to get to my goals by negotiating my way through people on whom i had no control or a reporting relationship in an organisation or in personal life surely i have learnt to understand each human being for who they are and what motivates them in different situationsas we progress in our career i believe this becomes a key differentiator between achieving csuite or otherwise contrary to popular beliefs which suggest that good salespeople are masters of eloquent yet insincere rhetoric we are usually by the end of an arduous day taught to be well informed well prepared and well rehearsed a seasoned salesperson knows that in matters of money we cant lag behind competitionbeing out on the road away from the luxuries of fancy office spaces early in my career kept me from falling into the inevitable death trap of entitlement more importantly the exposure to unknown faces competition clients helped me stay ahead of the learning curve at all times and significantly contributed to my professional development it expands our professional network far and beyond those we create within our own organisationin our career who we know becomes more important than what we know nichirens buddhism practices the philosophy of turning poison into medicine in daily life salespeople learn to do that on the job every day wherein they take their customers problems challenges and create value for them while creating value for themselves when one of indias leading entertainment chain wanted to ramp up their manpower by double but only during the weekends