Kindle Notes & Highlights
Children were different; they listened to you; that’s why they learned so quickly. Older people, he knew, didn’t learn slowly because they were old; they learned slowly, if at all, because they stopped listening.
So why was he a great salesman?
And he became a great salesman because he knew how to listen. That was all.
He realized that selling was not as simple as he first thought, that there was more to it than just listening.
he knew the second great secret of selling: it was knowing how to look.
And it was exactly the same in selling. He could look at his clients and listen to them. He could listen and hear not just the words, but what the customers really said. A salesman had to master the art of observation,
The people, who come by - especially the rich - they always leave a mess. It seems that when they travel they leave not just their homes but their manners behind.
. A salesman should know himself, for only a salesman who knows his strengths and his weaknesses can know the strengths and weaknesses of others.
Without such knowledge, a salesman will misread his client every time.
Only a salesman who acknowledged his weaknesses could do something about them. Self-knowledge was an essential ingredient for successful selling.
To answer that we must look to another basic tenet of the art of selling which states that one should turn one's disadvantage into an advantage."
Obviously your very remoteness from the business centre will allow you to offer the sorts of activities that only remoteness will allow."
"Well, then, it is a simple exercise," continued the salesman, "to show the authorities how a gambling house will increase their revenue.
All they need is an excuse to give you the licence, and your long distance from the town centre will provide them with that very excuse."
"It's a form of communication with the express purpose of convincing another to do something or buy something." "Yes.
Why is it that some few salesmen rise to greatness, while most of them barely eke out a living, even though they know all the techniques?"
"Go to the market place any day and these people will throw themselves at you. But that is not selling; that is begging.
"Those few who are real salesmen know that there is something primeval, something elemental about selling. Something almost not human…”
But a true salesman is an initiate because he knows his animal. He knows when to hold it back and when to let it go. For this reason the true salesman does not live in fear. And only where there is no fear, can there be love."
