The Street-Smart Salesman: How Growing Up Poor Helped Make Me Rich

Chapter 4

Your Advantage Is That No One Takes You Seriously

A common mistake that people make is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

—Douglas Adams

 

I am well aware that everyone makes fun of salespeople. Americans love to feel sorry for us. I attribute this national disdain to every American highschooler's being forced to read Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, with its exhausted central character, Willie Loman, struggling for love and meaning as his sales numbers go down.

He's hardly a role model, but whether we salespeople like it or not, Willie Loman is who most Americans think of when you tell them what you do for a living; they can't imagine living with such uncertainty themselves. Personally, I laugh it off. I'm able to laugh because in my life's journey people have assumed much worse things of me than that I was a loser. Plus, I'm living a life I love, entirely free from financial anxiety even in the current dreadful economy.

I am also well aware that nobody trusts salespeople. Because they assume we are desperate, they further assume that we are somehow cheating them. Like ambulance chasers (aka lawyers), salespeople score little higher in the popular estimation than thieves and liars. Let me assure you, however, that the vast majority of the millions of sales transactions that take place across this country and around the world every day are completely above board and satisfactory to all parties involved. If you think this is a book about how to ...