Waiting around!

In a previous life i was a "salesman", in fact i rang people who did not really want to see me and went to thier houses to sell them products that they did not really want to buy, and then i went to work the next day and did the whole thing all over again.

Not the most invigorating existence possible but sure it paid the bills and did'nt paddy kavanagh call insurance the last refuge of failed priests and poor scholars, or maybe it was poor priests and failed scholars.

one of the interesting things for me upon leaving the "sales" business is that i actually managed to convince myself that i was not a salesman anymore... the death of a salesman if you like, but i was dropping the name with all it's inferences. So for the last few years all those people who have not seen me in a while, who ask, "are you still in sales?" or "are you still in insurance?" are met with a very smug "no i work for myself now actually"

The truth is though i'm still in sales, in a funny way i was not running away from an occupation, just a label. through all the years of working as a salesman i never managed to shake of thinking of myself as Del Trotter or worse Jack lemmon from glengarry glenross (Gil from the Simpsons).

So this morning when i was all set and had the shirt ironed from my first appointment of the day, they phoned and cancelled and suddenly every feeling i ever had as a salesman came flooding back into my head..

They don't really want to see you, the product is useless, they'll never buy, you're no good..... one after another they whoosed through my brain, with me powerless to stop them...then i remembered i'm not that kind of salesman now...and that words are all about perception.

So if someone sees sales as gil from the simpsons, second hand car shyster, lying estate agent and they can't change thier perception, then they are far better off out of sales.. they'll always feel inadequate

However someone who see's sales as a positive helpful useful life enhancing occupation will not necessarily be better at it, but wow will they feel a hundred times better about themselves when they are working.

We are all in sales, whether we like it or not, solicitors, doctors, trainers, coaches, parents, sports people, it's just that some people don't connect it with the Arthur Miller "death of a saleman" stereotype...

for me..... i see it differently now...and i have to head into another meeting now....but if your man had not cancelled i would never have gotten to write this blog...but as time goes by i'm getting a bigger and better insight into the pure power of perception.