This week’s “sales thought” comes to you courtesy of NPR’s This American Life. If you haven’t listened to the program, you’re missing out on a collection of segments that will make you pause. I usually listen to it as I run errands around the city. It makes the time go by faster and I end up learning a lot in the process.
I had a backlog of the program so I listened to Three Kinds of Deception, their podcast that originally aired on December 15, 2000 (but they it re-aired recently).
What is a “great salesperson”?
At the beginning of Act One of program, Ira Glass states, “It’s a truism that a great salesman has to actually believe the lies he tells to make the sale, the way a great actor has to believe in his own part.”
Hold up! What did he just say?!
Well that just blew my mind. Opened up a Pandora’s box of reasons why Ira and others think this must be true. The wheels started turning in my head.
It’s no secret that salespeople have a bad reputation. If you’re a salesperson, you have probably come across this on more than one occasion.
To begin, we understand that there are good salespeople and bad salespeople. A bad salesperson likely sells a product that he/she either doesn’t believe in or acknowledges that it does not actually help others. Rule #1 of sales: if you don’t believe in the product, you won’t be successful. A good salesperson, on the other hand, knows that they provide asolution for individuals or companies with a specific need. They aren’t swindling the customer because there’s nothing to swindle.
I can get over the fact that Ira Glass perpetuates this idea of a bad salesperson (most people do). But the underlying assumption that salespeople MUST lie in order to make the sale does not sit well with me. The rest of the program goes on to tell this story.
The entire post is available on SalesEngine.com
