In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
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Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#2"to working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour adult video store (fired for being “too horny”)"
I really don't think this is why he was fired.
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#3Amazing piece. Full of gems like this sentence:
It was the Y2K-adjacent midpoint between the door-to-door salesmen of the boomer era and the present-day dystopia of A.I.–enhanced robocalling — the last few years before American credulity (and disposable income) was decisively strip-mined by post–9/11 disillusionment, the emergence of the internet, an economy that seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis, and, well, petty cheats like me, the bedrock of this nation.
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#4This piece obviously puts sales in a bad light. If you had asked me what a salesman is like in my early 20s, I would have described them much as this article expresses.
But in my career in Silicon Valley I really came to respect good salespeople. I often had roles where I was debugging customer-reported issues, and good salespeople make everything smoother.
I came to a conclusion that there are two types of sales transactions: one that is a one-time transaction and one that is an ongoing transaction.
The one-time salespeople were just like this article: they are just trying to close a sale knowing that they don't ever have to deal with you again. If they lie, they don't have to deal with the consequences. So their incentive is to spew any kind of nonsense or lies or manipulation to close the deal.
The other type of sales guys depending on building relationships. with engineers on both sides, with management, with purchasing and billing people, with everyone. When I was working on customer bugs, having a great sales guy representing the account made everything much easier. They could get the customers to loan hardware, assign more resources, get documentation, negotiate for time, etc. I respected these great sales guys because they had real skills and talent in these spheres that I didn't.
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#5Let me save u 10 minutes and get to the punchline.
"Eventually, it clicked, and I learned one of the bedrock principles of salesmanship: Whether you’re peddling long distance over the phone, Bibles door to door, or your own political candidacy on live national TV, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling—it matters how you make people feel. If you make them feel good, they’ll say yes. If you don’t, you could be selling a pill that reverses male-pattern baldness and makes you lose weight without exercise, and they’ll still turn you down flat."
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#6This piece obviously puts sales in a bad light. If you had asked me what a salesman is like in my early 20s, I would have described them much as this article expresses. But in my career in Silicon Valley I really came to respect good salespeople. I often had roles where I was debugging customer-reported issues, and good salespeople make everything smoother. I came to a conclusion that there are two types of sales tra…
> I came to a conclusion that there are two types of sales transactions: one that is a one-time transaction and one that is an ongoing transaction.
Incidentally, this is the difference between a good real estate agent and a "door opener".
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#7Entertaining piece, the writing is very good. But the author was honest enough to tell us he had no problem lying at anytime when working as a salesman, so I take this article as a work of fiction (although I am sure that part, or perhaps most of it, is true).
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#8I remember those days of four hour telemarketing shifts. And there was an older woman with a silky smooth voice where I worked too
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#9This piece obviously puts sales in a bad light. If you had asked me what a salesman is like in my early 20s, I would have described them much as this article expresses. But in my career in Silicon Valley I really came to respect good salespeople. I often had roles where I was debugging customer-reported issues, and good salespeople make everything smoother. I came to a conclusion that there are two types of sales tra…
I don't think the people you are describing are called "sales" - usually they are "post-sales support", or "account manager", or something similar.. Basically "project manager" equivalent for customer relationship.
Fully agree that they are great though.
Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work
#10#1: An inmate who preaches "criminal wisdom" of questionable quality, like "want to know how to disable a burglar alarm with aluminum foil?"
#2: A telemarketing old lady with a "warm voice and metronomic cadence".
#3: An NYC beggar who "walks up to a table, falls to his knees, interlaces his hands as if in prayer, and begs, at the top of his lungs, Please please please, money, please I need a dollar!"