Why Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements today, tired, discouraged and underpaid?

        Barbara Anderson, who worked in a bank in New York, desired to move to Phoenix, Arizona, because of the health of her son. She wrote the following letter to twelve banks in Phoenix:

 
Dear Sir:

        My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to a rapidly growing bank like yours.

        In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assign­ment as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all phases of banking including depositor relations, credits, loans and administration.

        I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals.

Sincerely,
Barbara L. Anderson

        Do you think Mrs. Anderson received any response from that letter? Eleven of the twelve banks invited her to be interviewed, and she had a choice of which bank’s offer to accept. Why? Mrs. Anderson did not state what she wanted, but wrote in the letter how she could help them, and focused on their wants, not her own.

        Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why? Because they are always Fundamental Techniques in Handling People thinking only of what they want. They don’t realize that neither you nor I want to buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. But both of us are eternally interested in solving our prob­lems. And if salespeople can show us how their services or mer­chandise will help us solve our problems, they won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And customers like to feel that they are buying— not being sold.

        Yet many salespeople spend a lifetime in selling without seeing things from the customer’s angle. For example, for many years I lived in Forest Hills, a little community of private homes in the center of Greater New York. One day as I was rushing to the station, I chanced to meet a real-estate operator who had bought and sold property in that area for many years. He knew Forest Hills well, so I hurriedly asked him whether or not my stucco house was built with metal lath or hollow tile. He said he didn’t know and told me what I already knew—that I could find out by calling the Forest Hills Garden Association. The following morn­ing, I received a letter from him. Did he give me the information I wanted? He could have gotten it in sixty seconds by a telephone call. But he didn’t. He told me again that I could get it by tele­phoning, and then asked me to let him handle my insurance.

        He was not interested in helping me. He was interested only in helping himself.