How Many Salespeople Does It Take to Sell a Pencil?

How many salespeople did it take to sell you that lowly pencil which probably sits forgotten in a desk drawer right now? At first thought, you might think the answer is zero. You went to a big box office supply superstore and simply picked it off a shelf, so there was no need to involve a single salesperson.

But if you think about it a little more, the picture begins to change. Who sold the box of pencils to the store? Who sold the shelving system that holds the boxes in the store, and who sold the electrical services that hooked up the lights so that you could see to pick up the box? Who sold the cardboard to the packaging company that sold the packaging to the pencil manufacturer? Who helped the printer of that package to select the best ink at the best price and apply the best process to print the picture on the box that sold you on the idea of reaching for that particular box instead of the other brand six inches over?

When you work backwards through that chain, it’s easy to lose count of how many salespeople it took to get that particular box on that particular shelf on that day so that it was there when you needed it.

But when you work from the other  direction, it’s even more impressive. Who supplied the machinery to the logging company that cut down the cedar trees? Who sold the concrete and the engineering services to build the plant that produced the electricity which powered the factory which assembled the trucks that transported the logs to the mill? Multiply those combinations by the number of other items that go into the process of making a single pencil, such as the miners who mined the zinc for the brass ferrule, or the chemicals that comprise the ingredients to make up the eraser, or the processes to produce that beautiful rich yellow coat, and it’s obvious that thousands of salespeople had a hand in selling you that pencil.

Just like the simple pencil, every single good or service produced and sold in the world today is a product of thousands of transactions where buyers made the best possible decision based on input and—hopefully—trusted advice from a sales professional. Quite simply, sales professionals lubricate the gears of the world economy. Next time someone asks you what salespeople contribute to society, ask them how many salespeople sold them that pencil on their desk.

Note: I got the idea for this post from the late Leonard Read, an economist who wrote a deep and delightful essay in 1958 entitled “I, Pencil”, in which he makes the point that no single person in the world has the individual know-how to make something as simple as a pencil. I’ve merely adapted his idea to the world of professional selling.