On Topic: A sales force of nature

Several pages into graphic novelist Seth's book, “Clyde Fans,” the protagonist tells a joke:

A salesman, he says, bursts into an executive's office in hopes of selling some neckties. The startled businessman replies he doesn't need any ties today. The salesman keeps pushing - “Pure silk, really a high-quality item, sir.”

The executive looses his patience and tosses the salesman out of his office.

The salesman stands up, brushes himself off, then says, “Well, now that we've got that ugliness out of the way, how about buying some ties?”

Persistence, the narrator tells us, is the moral of that story.

I remembered Seth's punchline when I happened to come across management consultant Robert N. McMurry's influential “Harvard Business Review” article (discovered, as is often the case, when I was searching for something else entirely).

The essay, “The Mystique of Super-Salesmanship,” was first published in 1961, at a time when the “Mad Men” we now watch on TV were real and conditioning our parents and grandparents to want to buy things they hadn't realized they couldn't live without.

Much of what McMurry wrote still seems true today. And his big question was one businesses are still trying to crack: Are successful sales people born or made?

If we knew the answer, we could figure out the best people to hire, and what sorts of training to give them to help achieve their goals.

But frankly McMurry's description of the ideal sales professional doesn't sound all that flattering. He listed such “qualities” as:

•  Highly energetic - “Many of the best salesmen are hypomaniacs,” McMurry contended. They are “seducers.” (Zou bisou bisou, Mr. Draper.)
•  Self-confident - “This is often a neurotic compensation for, or denial of, strong buried feelings of inadequacy or inferiority.”
•  Money-driven - “Many salesmen … love to show off. This often requires money.”
•  Tenacious - “Many successful salesman hate their prospects (because of those earlier rejections from) too many whom they regard as their intellectual and cultural inferiors. Closing the sale thus constitutes a ‘victory' over the buyer.”

Yikes.

The traits of McMurry's “super-salesman” are imbued with that era's fascination with psychoanalysis. And he undoubtedly figured they had to be part snake-oil con artist and part Terminator due to the high amount of rejection required - they need to withstand a lot of “no.”

To tell the truth, most of the really good sales folk I've known have been a bit more, well, charmingly quirky than sociopath.

One of the best would make call after call to her client list. And when she'd close a sale, she'd jump up from her desk and perform an elaborate dance number, with her own joyful shouts of “Hoo, hoo!” and snapping of fingers.

Everyone in the office knew when she'd landed another deal, and it certainly spurred on the rest of the sales force.

Showoff? Sure. Motivated by money? Well, maybe.

But her real secret wasn't really a secret at all. As more than one sales manager has said: In good times, customers buy from people they know and like. And in bad times, they buy from people they know and like.