sales technique
When times are tough, I sometimes find it useful to think about the things in life that I’m able to control while giving less thought to those I can’t. The plain fact is, no matter how troubling the news is or how tough the economy makes our working lives, nothing
There are those in this business who are extremely adept at selling, and I'm definitely not one of them. I get by, but it's never been my long suit by any means. I've always admired the good salespeople I've met, and I fully accept the hard reality that to build a watershape at any level, one must sell it first. But I came up on the design/construction side of the watershaping business, and I've never found a clear way past the fact that, for me, sales has always been an area where I consistently have plenty of room for personal growth and improvement. I know that selling is important not only because it brings business through the door, but also because it sets the stage for everything that follows as a project progresses. As practiced by real professionals, I've observed that it's much more about
Back in February's WaterShapes, I stepped a bit beyond the usual in discussing Harvests of Joy by Robert Mondavi, noting that I'd read the book based on a recommendation from fellow WaterShapes columnist Brian Van Bower. I also mentioned that the book was one of the most important I've come across in recent years. This time around, I'd like to review another of Brian's recommended books - one he suggested during a seminar I recently attended and which has also proved to be wonderfully useful and extremely influential: Samurai Selling: The Ancient Art of Service in Sales by Chuck Laughlin and Karen Sage with Marc Bockmon (St. Martin Press, 1993). Until I read this book, my sense of what Samurai were all about was based on no more than warrior movies and video games. What I learned instead is that Samurai based their lives entirely on a concept of service (of which warfare was only a small part). The authors use the philosophy of the Samurai to define
