Elite Sales Strategies

Introduction

People buy from people they trust to make a decision they don't trust themselves to make.

—Chris Beall

Three Miles High and One-Down

I was standing at Basecamp 1 on Mount Everest, where the thinness of the air at 17,000 feet made it hard to breathe. I had no interest in climbing 12,000 more feet to scale the tallest mountain on Earth, but I could not pass up the chance to take some pictures. Unfortunately, I'd suffered from altitude sickness during my entire visit to Tibet: my hands and arms often started tingling, like when your leg falls asleep during a long flight, and more than once I woke up gasping for air. A week's worth of prescription medicine had not done me much good—the tingling was getting worse, and that day it had not stopped for hours. Three miles above sea level, I was becoming concerned.

Soon, even the small hill we were climbing was too much for me to handle. My Sherpa, the guide who arranged and led our trip that day, asked me what was wrong. I breathlessly pushed out the words, “I have altitude sickness. I'm tingling and it's hard to breathe.” He replied, “Are you taking altitude medicine?” I pulled the small box of pills out of my pocket and explained that my doctor prescribed them. The Sherpa took one look at the medicine and diagnosed me: “The medicine is what's making you sick. Throw it away, then walk faster so you can get more air into your body.” Walk faster? I can barely inch up this hill! But I knew I had to make a choice: Did ...