by Carol Gioia

Created on: May 21, 2008

Selling is a talent and a skill. The world is populated with people who profess to be salesmen. In actuality they are employed as "order takers." They wait on customers and collect payment in exchange for purchased goods.

True salesmen are an almost extinct breed. These are the individuals who know their business, believe in their product and convey that confidence to the customer in the form of education about the item being purchased.

A real salesman will not accept rationalizations such as "business is slow." He creates business by taking every opportunity to converse with customers and draw their attention to his product. Once he has their attention, he demonstrates what the product will do for the customers and why they cannot afford to be without the item. In order to succeed in converting this conversational exchange into a sale, the professional salesman will exude honesty and confidence. He actually sells himself as a prerequisite to selling his product.

My husband has been a salesman for fifty years. He started out selling sewing machines for Singer Company. For fifteen years he demonstrated sewing machines to potential customers and accumulated awards and trophies for his outstanding selling performance.

He learned to sew and demonstrated the sewing machine with so much skill that customers and coworkers were in awe of his talent. He could take a sewing machine apart and repair, clean, oil and adjust with more proficiency than the Singer service department technicians. More often than not a customer who was "just looking" walked away the proud owner of the latest and greatest product available.

When Singer Co. closed their retail stores, my husband took his talent and training to Sears Roebuck Company and became equally knowledgeable about the vacuum cleaner as he was the sewing machine. Soon he became the top salesman of small appliances in the Western Division. His explanation of his success was, "If you know your product, you can sell anything to anyone." He also believes there is no such thing as "just looking," for if an individual were truly not interested he would be elsewhere.

Sears is famous for offering maintenance contracts on their products. My spouse claimed his own fame by leading product sales and maintenance agreement sales nationwide for some years. He continued to accrue awards, trophies, monetary prizes and accolades.

He has taught many an educational seminar on the benefits of the maintenance agreement. Sears customers are often reluctant

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