Financial Marketing

Find A Problem!  Many years ago Dr. Karl Meninger of the world-famed Meninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, was asked the question: "What would you do if you feared that a nervous breakdown was coming on?"  Without hesitation Dr. Meninger said, "I would find somebody with a bigger problem and get involved with helping him solve his problem; in the process I would forget about my own."

Many people do not realize the important role that sales people have played in America.  America was discovered by a salesman.  Christopher Columbus was looking for India and missed it by about 10,000 miles.  Fortunately, he was a better salesman than he was a navigator!

If you question his sales credentials, consider this: He was an Italian in Spain with only one prospect to call on.  If he missed the sale, he would have to swim home.  That's pressure selling.  Once aboard ship, he really had to "sell" in order to sail.  Those sailors were going to throw him overboard and he kept saying, "It's just around the corner or over the horizon, let's sail one more day!"  Then came that exciting call from the lookout, "Land ho!" and the most profitable sales call in history came to a close.

I'm certain you've heard that phrase used many times.  Almost without exception it refers to an outgoing, personable, gregarious individual who is a veritable chatterbox.  In reality, that stereotype no longer fits the sales profession, if it ever did.  Actually, there is no such thing as a "typical sales person."  Sixteen-year-olds can be exceptionally good at selling and 80+year-olds can be sharp and effective.  They come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and they can be either male or female.

As I took my seat in the crowded airplane, the woman in the next seat over smiled. “Headed home?” she asked.

I nodded. “Jupiter, Florida.”

“You’re a long way from home!” she exclaimed. We were on the tarmac in Regina, Saskatchewan. “What brought you to Regina?”

I told her I had been conducting a seminar for a sales organization. She wrinkled her nose. “Oh,” she pronounced, “I could never sell.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. In fact, most people not actually in sales seem to feel this way. I asked her, if she didn’t mind, how would she define “selling”? I was curious as to what it was she felt she could never do.