Laurens Schaberg's Linkedin Analytics

I have always been fascinated by the concept of "sales". It ranges from lemonade stands to multi-billion M&A's, and everything in between. My first sales experience as a kid was when I cleared out my parents' attic and sold our "redundant stuff" on a flea market. I walked away with a whopping 500 USD, the equivalent of 170 work hours at my local supermarket. It taught me two things: 1) Personal opinions about value don't matter. There is a market for everything, for the right person. 2) Sales is the big equalizer. My flea market money held just as much value as 4 months slaving away in a supermarket. My first professional sales role was when I came to Japan and joined a local recruitment firm. To this day I still believe recruitment is the biggest sales challenge out there. When you sell Ferrari's, customers might have high expectations, but at the end of the day, the car starts for anyone. It doesn't refuse to drive because it doesn't quite like its new owner. Very much different for recruitment. In recruitment, you always need to make a double sale: convince the client this is the right candidate for them, and convince a candidate that joining your client is equally in their best interest. Of course, there are a ton of factors to take into account such as career goals, growth ambitions, etc but this is what it ultimately comes down to. It was a perfect experience and opened so many doors going forward. Together with a fantastic group of people, we started Zensho Agency, a recruitment firm based on the idea of independence and freedom. Good salespeople don't need mandatory KPI, they set their own goals and know exactly what activity is required to achieve them. We helped hundreds of candidates realize their career potential and "liberated" quite a few recruiters from the corporate status quo on the way. That is something I have been enormously proud of. Our job titles and even industry niches don't define us. Who we are is determined by what we do and how we do it. And in my case, I enjoy commercial interactions, sales, pitches, connecting supply and demand, and closing the deal in the end with happy customers. It's not complicated, but most good things aren't.