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

Chapter 10

The Role of Emotion

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

—G. K. Chesterton

 

At the start of a business call, you may briefly talk sports, family, weather, sure. But keep in mind that your duty is to be a trouble-free, problem-solving constant in a customer's working life. You'll fill that role best if you never forget that every conversational exchange, no matter how apparently casual, is, for you, a purposeful, fact-finding mission. You don't need your customer to talk baseball with you—you can talk baseball in a way you care about with your friends. What you're pursuing is a customer's business; you're just using baseball stories and other commonalities to probe for useful information. What's important to your baseball-loving customer? Stats? Paydays? Tradition? Honor? Loyalty? Let him lead; whatever he reveals, keep it in mind when structuring a deal for him. Because people buy on emotion, not logic.

The thoughtfulness you display toward a client must never be interpretable as false camaraderie. A professional is able to confer his attention without being perceived as looking for a friend. In my entire career, I have never had a client say to me in the spirit of friendship, “Hey, profits are up and I want to increase the price I pay to you for the goods.” That's fairy-tale stuff. So don't feign a shared interest in small planes just because you see a couple of framed pictures ...