Existential Sales Psychology

In many situations my sales technique is indistiguishable from a therapy session.  After all, sales is about establishing a relationship, a relationship is built on trust, and trust requires intimacy.

In these sessions you have to start with the fundamental fact that people are insecure about something.  The insecurity may not necessarially be about you or the situation or the reason you are even there.   But you have to wait, to be patient, and tease the thing out, because ultimately you need to support this insecurity.

Most insecurities come back to the prime existential doubts: death, isoloation, independence, having to make decisions.  These usually manifest themselves in very indirect ways.  Your job as a salesperson is to find out what these insecurities are and to support them.

And how do you support them?

The opposite of insecurities are vanities, what a person takes pride in.  Everyone has these too, and unlike insecurities these are usually pretty easy to distiguish.  Your job as therapist-salesperson is to use a person's vanities to support their insecurities, acting as middle man and earning trust.

It's really not that hard.

The difficulty lies in taking your own emotions - your own insecurities and vanities - out of the equation, while at the same time remaining authentic (and, yes, this exact same advice is given to therapists).

One Casualy of the Digital Age?

Browsing through a catalog I stumbled across something that sort of startled me: big ass bookcases. 

Now I grew up with these things all over my house.  For their three kids my parents shelled out the big bucks for Encyclopedia Britannica and the Great Books, sizable investments relative to their income at the time.  They also loaded up on all sorts of Time-Life series, the ones I liked best being the science-oriented books on Nature, Science, the Mind....remember those?

PLUS there were lots and lots of novels: hardbacks, paperbacks, mysteries, thrillers, you name it.  I grew up with essentially a private library, so large, crowded bookshelves were in nearly every room in the house, the Britannicas proudly displayed in the living room where guests might see them.

Today I carry the same information on my eight by twelve inch tablet computer.  

I've gone digital, a process I started years ago.  My few holdover "real" books that I can't let go of largely out of sentimental reasons sit in a semi-discarded desk in the garage, the few visitors who might find themselves in there running a curious eye over everything from philosophy to religion to the entire opus of Michael Connelly.  "Real" books might be found on my bedstand the few times I can't find something in digital format, but they go to the library or garage when they are completed, never being displayed or stored in the residence proper.

But when I go "home" (I own my own house, but where my parents live will always be home) I find I miss the musty smell of the stacks, the ability to peruse old acquaintances, discovering new additions my parents added since my last visit.

I may revert back to bookshelves eventually since much of the library is to be bequeathed to me once my parents pass on.  Once in my possession I plan to actually finish the Great Books I haven't read, my parent's investment finally paying off in my old age.  But by that time displaying books in the home might be the same as displaying antiques.

The Fallacy of "Green Jobs"

Every time I hear a politician talk about government spending to create "green jobs" I can't believe the illogic of the argument:

1. If "green" energy works, it will take the place of "old" energy - oil, coal, natural gas, etc.
2. So if green jobs go up, old energy jobs go down.  Best case there is a one-for-one trade off a lost carbon energy job for every green worker who gains a job.
3. If green energy really is more efficient, it means that the total energy needs of the U.S. will be supported by fewer people, so green energy means a net loss of jobs.

But at the end of the day "green jobs" is just a code word for government spending boondoggles that do nothing to help the employment picture, or create more energy, or bring energy costs down, but some people go along with it because it "sounds good".

Dumb Move. First They'll Steal Your Technology, Next They Will Crowd You Out

Lesson 1: don't trust the Chinese.  Lesson 2: they will stab you in the back (see Lesson 1).  But GE, thought to be a well-run company, apparently doesn't know since they agreed to share their jet technology with China.

 
Name one - any - company that is happy with their joint development efforts with China.  Name one that hasn't had their technology boldly ripped off?  Name one who has made money in the long run.

Literary Quote of the Day

The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

- Hemingway, "A Farewell to Arms"