Sales Talk
We all bring stories with us. If we pay attention I see those stories as possible lessons. Here is one I have on authenticity.
I used to work for a multinational company. We had divisions in Japan and Europe and those folks would come to train with us. This gave us lots of opportunity to learn from them too.
One side story, I was always amazed to walk into the men’s room and find some of the Japanese taking pictures of the toilet. I never really asked why but on my first trip to Japan I caught myself taking a picture of their toilets too. Moving on to the real story.
One of their sales guys came over from Japan and worked with our sales and marketing team. Normally they’d stay about 6 weeks or so and their goal was to learn English better and learn how we did things. They usually took an American name and he was Mitch.
Mitch had been there about 3 weeks and we all liked him. He was curious and had a great sense of humor. One day, he walked up to a small group of us talking in the office and he asked Mark if he could ask a question. We all paused and listened.
Mitch said ” What means bullsh*t?” and he did it with a straight face, seriously trying to understand English.
Mark tried to explain it as something that might have some truth in it but isn’t really true. He kept talking along that line for a minute and finally Mitch smiled and said “Oh, you mean sales talk!”.
We all laughed and said he got it. Exactly right.
Sales talk crosses language, culture and we all get it. We know sales talk when we hear it, don’t we. We know how the news media spins things to make it say one thing in the headline and another in the article. We know when a politician is lying (their lips are moving, right 😎).
We also know when we hear someone being authentic. We might have a wait-see period to test them but we just know when someone it being real and that builds trust over time.
I want to encourage you to be consistently authentic so people trust you and perhaps they will be authentic too. It’s the best way to build a referral-based business and make friends along the way.
That’s enough for now. Did you learn something from this? Do you have a comment or maybe disagree with me? If so, I’d love to chat about it.
I mean it. Maybe it’s not about this article but something else. Are you still isolated by this virus? Would you like to talk about new agent stuff? I’m happy to talk with you if it will help.
If you want to schedule a call you can click on this link. It will take you to a calendar where you can request a time block. I’ll accept and we’ll get on Google Meet or Zoom to talk face to face.
This is free and it might just help if you’re stuck. No strings, no pitch, just someone to listen and maybe get you unstuck. Besides, I’d love to talk about this with someone who is sincerely curious and wants to pursue this business the way I did.
I’m here if you want to reach out.
I hope you will.
Thanks for listening,
Jerry Robertson
678-616-1578 Direct Line