As published in Inside Indiana Business, March 26, 2026 People are often flummoxed when they learn I’ve never taken a class in writing, yet somehow manage to earn a living at it. I give much of the credit for that to a salesman three decades my senior.
Many writers have influenced and informed the work I do every day. I’ve worked for several great bosses, some real jerks, and a few who managed to check both boxes. Some still yell at me as I’m writing, addressing my idiocy and obvious lack of talent. I loved some, despised others, but they’re all with me every time I stare at the cursor. I even get pats on the back now and again.
Yet none of them had the biggest influence on how I approach this strange way to make a living. The credit (or fault) for that goes to my father. From his mid-20s until his heart demanded retirement, Dad was a straight-commission salesman. His products were chemicals for maintenance and processes, and his market was the many industries surrounding Lake Michigan’s southern tip.
His job involved a lot of routine orders, but he never got bored with the process. He was perfectly happy to sell someone a barrel of the same stuff every month for 25 years, because that presented an opportunity to engage with them. He knew hard work. When I was 16, I was bussing tables. At that age, Dad was tending 2800° open-hearth furnaces, cooking steel to help win the war. During the next war, an Army aptitude test accurately predicted he’d make a great salesman.
I say that with complete confidence because I got to see him in action so many times. Long before there were bring-your-kid-to-work days, Dad used those teacher in-service days as an excuse to have me spend the workday with him. As we drove past all sorts of structures and machinery, he’d explain what the company was and talk about what it did there. Quench towers, catalytic crackers, rolling mills – things most little kids never see – were as familiar to me as the starting lineups at Wrigley Field.
Curiosity feeds my writing, but it doesn’t inspire the way I do it. What did? Well, Dad never opened a sales call by discussing paradigms of procurement practice or spending ten minutes detailing the founding of his company and its market superiority. These were busy people whose time couldn’t be wasted – but that didn’t stop him from renewing his rapport with them. He spent more time listening than talking. He knew instinctively that while he may have been selling to a company, his customers were people, so he never said, “Here’s why XYZ industries should use this surfactant.” Instead, he’d talk about how it would address that customer’s immediate issue.
When answering questions about a product, he never once brought up molecular structures so he could prove he was smarter than the customer. Whether he was responding to the buyer or someone on the shop floor who would use what he was selling, he spoke at a level they understood – and checked to verify they did. If the customer wasn’t convinced the recommended degreaser was up to the task, he’d roll his shirtsleeves up and grab a rag to demonstrate. Selling was about the commission, to be sure, but making someone else’s job easier was his real motivation. Doing that built an astounding amount of trust.
And he never made the mistake so many copywriters do: leaving the customer not knowing what to do. He always asked for the order – not as “please buy from me,” but as “how many drums do you need?”
My profession is a form of sales, but it’s definitely a different animal. Sales is one of the toughest jobs I know. It’s a challenge to try to build an emotional rapport with one person whose attention you have and whose responses you can see. Copywriters have to make that kind of connection with thousands – sometimes millions –at once. We don’t want you to make only a business connection with our clients. We’re seeking an emotional connection, too.
Nothing would have pleased Dad more than to have me join the ranks of the men and women who, day after day, summon the courage and take the deep breath before reaching out to that first prospect. I wonder if he ever realized we simply worked different ends of the same process. Copywriters like me focus on paving the way to prospects so salespeople like Dad are more likely to succeed. I’m sure he’d take the credit for my own success … and definitely deserved it.