“Used car salesmen” is often used as a jeer / tease for someone who can really persuade. I don’t know when salesmanship gets such a bad rep, maybe it goes all the way back to the “snake oil” days. Ignoring the fraudulent claims, there are now enough studies to understand its actual “mechanics” – how and why certain things work.
For sure there are natural salesmen and you can see it even from childhood. However, many can improve via training. Salesmanship actually have behavioral science as its backing. Therefore, paying attention to the choice of words, what was presented before the actual sales pitch, how to build trust, how to influence priorities, what choices were presented alongside and much more. With a better understanding of the instinctive reaction of their potential customers, they can lead you step by step towards their goal. If you are oblivious to the techniques, you may not even know you are already in step 4 of a “trap”.
With a bad rep, you seldom hear young folks aspire to become a salesman. Truth be told that while you may not want to become a professional salesman, you must apply sales technique almost everyday. Following are a just a few examples:
- Good teacher can use good sales techniques too. For example, instead of just telling the kids not to do something, some offer kids “choices” like: Do you want to work hard now and play later or do you want to quietly sit at the corner and watch others during playtime?
- Environmental scientists need to be able to present their arguments in a clear understandable manner to get approval for funding and research.
- Anyone going for a job interview or even writing a resume is pitching themselves against other candidates and must win to get the job they want. Most common mistake for young folks is that they emphasize on why they needed a job and not why it is to the company’s advantage to have them as an employee.
Exercise
Do they teach you salesmanship explicitly in school?
How is this related to self defense? Both as a fighter? as well as a coach.
Give examples.