Have you ever considered a career as a knocker-upper?
No, we’re not making an obscene suggestion. Knocker-upper was actually a real job in the 1800s and early 1900s.
You see, before alarm clocks became affordable, people who lived in cities needed a way to make sure that they woke up in time for work. The solution was to hire a knocker-upper, a person who would, for a very small sum, tap on your window each morning to wake you up. Some of them carried long poles to reach second story windows, while others used pea shooters. Often older people who could no longer do other kinds of physical labor performed the job, but it was also a source of extra income for some policemen who were already out doing their rounds anyway.
Eventually, of course, alarm clocks became inexpensive, and the last knocker-upper stopped working in the 1970s. And lots of other jobs have all but disappeared as well. Blacksmiths, typesetters, phrenologist, ice cutters, and many others were once perfectly common occupations made obsolete by advancements in science and technology.
Could sales analysts one day become obsolete?
It’s certainly the case that technology is able to do more and more things that once required a sales analyst. It’s not impossible to imagine that some organizations would see fit to one day lay off an entire sales operations department.
But we would argue that whether or not your particular role becomes obsolete depends on your personal mindset.
Let’s go back to those knocker-uppers for a minute. If you were a knocker-upper and viewed your job as “waking up early to tap on people’s windows,” clearly that role no longer exists.
But if you had defined your role as “helping people wake up to get to work on time,” you might have broadened your skillset and branched into other areas that helped keep you employed. Maybe you could have sold alarm clocks or watches. The sales pitch wouldn’t really have been that different — and the hours and pay might have been considerably better.
In the same way, if you consider your role to be “analyzing sales data,” it’s very possible that one day a computer could take over your job. But if you view your job more strategically as “Proactively creating the conditions where more deals, that are more profitable, with better customers, are the natural result,” you might just futureproof your career and open the right doors to more personal fulfilment.
As a bonus, this more strategic mindset pays off whether or not sales analysts go the way of knocker-uppers. If you are thinking more strategically, you’ll be helping improve your organization’s revenues and margins, which will be good for the entire business — not just your career.
If you’re intrigued by this idea, we encourage you to check out the following resources:
- Advancing Your Career in Sales Operations
- Crucial Sales Ops Concepts
- From Tactical to Strategic Sales Ops
Unless you still live at home with your parents, you probably don’t use a knocker-upper today. In fact, chances are good that you don’t even have one of the alarm clocks that made knocker-uppers obsolete. You probably wake up to an alarm from your phone or some other kind of smart device in your house. And while we don’t have an actual stats to prove this point, we think that the number of people involved in manufacturing and selling smartphone and smart devices probably far exceeds the number who were employed as knocker-uppers.
The need to be woken up never went away. It was just that the means for meeting this need changed a bit.
The need to have improve sales results will also never go away. And if you approach this need strategically, your job title might change, but a role for people like you will continue to exist.
Advancing Your Career in Sales Operations
There's never been a better time to be working in Sales Operations. But you can’t just sit back and hope that good things will happen. In this on-demand webinar, learn strategies and tactics for Sales Ops career development.
Crucial Sales Operations Concepts
What sets a great Sales Ops team apart often comes down the core concepts and principles they embrace. In this on-demand webinar, you'll learn about 15 fundamental concepts that every Sales Ops leader and practitioner needs to understand inside and out.
From Tactical to Strategic Sales Ops
Some teams are so mired in tactical grunt work and daily firefights that they never make progress on strategic pursuits. How have other Sales Ops teams transitioned into more strategic functions? What steps did they take?
