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After I was "liberated" from the restaurant industry, I answered an ad in the paper that vaguely suggested selling art in a "rock n' roll atmosphere". The gallery was located, according to the ad, in a hip part of town. Thinking it was some sort of legitamate art gallery, I set off for the interview.
Some of you may know where this is heading. You can find ads like these in several cities. The "gallery" was not located in a hip part of town. And it wasn't a "gallery", just an office and a warehouse full of art. The job was selling art to companies door-to-door. I felt duped.
The manager who interviewed me said "of course we duped you. If the ad had said anything about sales, would you have answsered it?" No, I admitted. I had never once considered sales as a field I wanted a part of. "Well why not try it, you can make good money and we all drink beer at the end of the day. You'll meet some cool people, hit on receptionists, make some friends..." He didn't need to go on, the promise of free beer was enough to interest me.
So I became a door-to-door salesman. The company I worked for was pretty slick. Follow their program and you could have a lot of fun and make some good money. And the office certainly had a "rock n' roll atmosphere", and there was beer. Lots of beer.
I won't go into all the details, but the job required being likable and charming on command. It involved things like Attracting Attention, Being Excited and Exciting, or Taking Control of Conversations. I'm a pretty low-key guy, so all of this went against my reserved nature. But I tried hard, and it all got easier and easier to do.
But that's not really a belief change, just a personality change. The hard part was coming up.
People still weren't buying art from me. I couldn't understand it. I had as many shows as anyone else (meaning I, a scraggly looking stoner, could stroll into a random office and convince at least a few goons in suits to come take a look at the art I had stashed in the trunk of my car, which is not a very easy thing to do), but I couldn't close the deal for shit. I could get the people to the art, I just couldn't make them buy it. I went to my manager for advice.
He tells me "the reason everyone else is making at least $100 a day except you is because they BELIEVE that the product is great. This belief comes across and people get excited about the product and want to buy it". I told him I didn't buy all that bullshit.
"Of course not" he says. "I bet when you go into one of those giant glass corporate towers you're having fun running around where you know you don't belong, having talked your way past receptionists or security guards or whatever." I say yeah, that's about right. "Because you don't believe in the product. You don't believe you are actually giving them a good deal. You believe you are swindling them". Guilty, I says. "That's why you don't close. Customers can pick up on that. You have every other advantage I can think of, but you'll get nowhere until you start to believe". I hestitated to give him any credit, not least because this whole YOU MUST BELIEVE bit was starting to freak me out. But he had been doing the job for years and had great success with it.
So now I had to believe in the idea of going door to door selling art. The other salespeople agreed on this. Problem was I, in sharp contrast to everyone else at the company, could not in any way justify strolling into a cubicle farm during office hours, distrubing everybody in the room, and trying to sell them art. I didn't think I could ever see that as anything other than very inappropriate. Personally, I would (and do) tell any and all door-to-door people to get the hell out. But I was rapidly running out of money and needed to start selling so I gave it a shot.
Final Analysis: I could, through lots of effort, convince myself that what I was doing was okay. I could believe that I had every right to stroll past "No Soliciting" signs and make a pitch to someone. Unfortunately, cold calling sales involves a lot of rejection, and some of it is pretty intense. People have called the police on me more than once. Voices are often raised. My belief was there, but it wasn't strong enough to stand up to the rejection I was going through. It was a constant battle of will just to go through the next door and face down whoever I had to make the pitch to, much harder than when it was all just a game. In the end I had to quit. I couldn't sustain a level of belief strong enough to make me any money. I got the sense that with practice I could have been successful, but at that point I was flat broke and didn't have the time to experiment.
Too bad. At least I learned some neat shit. Anyone else have any experieces they would like to share regarding a concious shift in personal beliefs, hopefully meeting with more success than myself? |
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