Form: Short Note

SALESMANSHIP

People want a salesman that they think can understand them. The way you make people think you understand them is through listening, and paraphrasing, and preferably adding a touch of insight to the paraphrasing. So the principle issue with sales is getting the other person to talk, because when you’re talking, you’re not listening, and if you’re not listening, you aren’t paraphrasing. It’s only after we have negotiated this ‘protocol’ of shared understanding that we can begin to ‘inform’ and only once we have informed, we can persuade. The best classes I have taken and taught have been in personality traits and sales. I taught sales for quite a few years and built some very good sales teams, and it’s a very simple process. The only difficulty is in finding leads. Sales is easy. It’s just not efficient. And it’s the people who understand it’s inefficient and have high tolerance or interest in listening to and understanding potential customers that develop into good salesman. Extroversion (getting a charge from interactions) is extremely valuable.