Sitting in the gym jacuzzi this morning, 6:30 a.m, it’s Thursday, and there was a dude basking in his watery corner, loud talking (way loud, in a hard-tiled room), and doing something no one should -- selling to a stranger, who was just trying to sit in some burbling hot water to start his day. At 6:30 a.m. On a Thursday.
Do not make “salesperson” a major part of your everyday personality. Even if you sell for a living, and even if you’re good at it, and even if you’ve adopted sell-talk as one of the main ways you interact with the world. Sales is fine in a sales setting. But in social settings? No. It’s a no-no. It’s not just annoying, it’s existentially disruptive.
People who have signed over too much of their personality to traditional selling -- push, push, push, never don’t sell, I’m being glib and faking connection because I want you to consider buying from me -- do not communicate like normal humans. Their tone is way too assured, as if they’re oracle-speaking, rather than dialoguing. They’re basically running a staged monologue inside a conversation. There’s almost no breaks between their sentences, they flow confidently from one questionable claim to the next, from one promise to the next over-promise, from one piece of cliche life advice or faux interest in you or soft command -- “You should totally come to our event on Sunday, it’s going to be epic!” -- to the next.
I listened to my man boom his bs for about fifteen minutes. Until finally his beleaguered target escaped the jacuzzi. “Gotta go.” “Okay, great talking to you. We’ll see you Sunday. I’ll text you a reminder. Have a great day, Juan.”
With his quarry gone, what did seller man do next? Come on, you know. That’s right. He turned his attention to me. And said, “How are you today, my friend?”
And I said, “Good.” And I closed my eyes, and leaned back, and didn’t say anything else.
So he stopped selling.
And the world got quiet.
Which is what you would want. Early a.m. on a Thursday. In a jacuzzi.
#sales #newsales #quitselling #salesrhetoric