Good Salesmanship is Not a Contest

Some fifty years ago after graduating from high school I answered a help wanted ad promising huge rewards for selling “education.” It turned out to be a job selling encyclopedias door-to-door on straight commission. After spending a week learning the sales pitch, I hit the street to seek my fortune. I actually made a sale on my second call. It was also the last sale I made for that company and I quit two weeks later. I didn’t realize it then, but in retrospect the reason I failed to make another sale was because I just didn’t believe in the product. After making that first sale, I think that I subconsciously felt guilty about taking all that money from that family for over-priced books using high pressure tactics I had been taught. Lesson number one: You must believe in the product or service you’re selling.

The Tri-Star Vacuum Cleaner

Up until about 25 to 30 years ago, professional sales trainers advocated sales tactics which in fact made the selling process a contest of wits between salesman and customer. While my career in encyclopedia sales ended abruptly after only a few weeks, I did spend the rest of the 1960s in direct sales, most of those years in the vacuum cleaner business. I believed in my product so much that I managed to build a sales organization of some 300 men and women across western Canada that sold over 37,000 machines in a four-year span (machines which, today, retails for $1,900 U.S. – about ten times what we used to sell it for back then. http://www.oregoncityvacuum.com/aihoclsy1.html). Still, we used to train our sales force to view the selling process as a game of manipulation, like mental arm-wrestling with the prospective customer. Frankly, these practices were the norm for the day in the direct sales field and remain the status quo with many sales people to this day.


The major reason for my company’s success and ethical reputation was due to two important policies I implemented: (1) never to hire experienced direct sales people and (2) to let customers who woke up the next morning with buyer’s remorse cancel their contracts.


With respect to the first item, experienced direct sales people tend to float like gypsies from company to company and product to product. Oh, yes, they could sell – but, the problems they could cause in the process were an unwelcome side effect. Manipulation of the customer is one thing; deceit and misrepresentation is something else altogether. I managed to avoid this problem by hiring inexperienced people from virtually all other walks of life – other than direct sales, and training them my way.


As for the second policy, back in those days there was no cooling off period wherein the customer could cancel the contract after making a purchase. Once they signed on the dotted line and the sales person walked out the door, the purchase was legally binding and non-cancellable. Believe me, when you have a successful sales closure rate of 55% on cold call sales presentations (that is, when the customer did not contact you or even know what you were selling when you knocked on their door), you’re going to have your share of buyer’s remorse. While it was common practice in the industry to hold people to the contract at all costs, I figured it didn’t take a genius to understand that it is better to have 90% of your sales be satisfied customers than to have 10% of your customers angry and complaining to friends and the Better Business Bureau.

By the way, these are two more of the lessons I have learned and practices I have followed throughout the balance of my 50 years in business: (1) wherever possible, bring in raw recruits and train them YOUR way; they're less likely to bring any baggage with them from previous jobs and they tend to be more loyal to you; and, (2) don’t be afraid to give people their money back if they’re unhappy with their dealings with you; how can your company incur negative publicity if all you have on record are clients who were happy with their business dealings with you?

So, What IS the Art of Selling?



Selling is a process by which both you and another party have an equal opportunity to achieve a benefit from the transaction. It is not an adversarial contest of wits but rather a form of communicating a potential gain for the prospective client. I gained more insight into this theory beginning over three decades ago from the world-renowned sales trainer and motivational speaker, Jim Cathcart.

A must-have book for any
 sales professional's library

Jim’s concept of Relationship Selling has brought the art of salesmanship into the 21st century. It is the model every professional sales person needs to adopt to truly succeed at salesmanship. He does not merely preach the philosophy of relationship selling, he lives and breathes it himself. Since hiring Jim as a speaker back in 1979 (and he discusses that experience on one of his video previews), I wound up hiring him for several other major events over the years prior to selling TIDY CAR a decade later. Our relationship has transcended that of business and we remain friends to this day.

Unfortunately, many people are uncomfortable with the sales process due in no small part to the scenario I described above. They dislike the thought of entering a mental jousting contest with a prospective client. And having been through the old school of salesmanship myself, I can understand why. However, when you understand the process of relationship selling, I can tell you from experience that you will embrace the concept with your heart and soul. You’ll actually look forward to every opportunity you have to develop a mutually rewarding relationship.

In the old School of Thought, the sale was completed when the sales person "closed" the sale.  In reality, the sale only begins when the client says, "yes."  There is no business-to-client relationship where this holds truer than in our industry.  Every week on every visit you're reinforcing the fact that your client made the right decision in hiring your company.  And instead of over-selling your service, the strategy should be to undersell it and deliver more than you promise. 

People do expect a clean home when you visit.  What they don't expect is the fresh carnation your team leaves behind when they come -- or the Andes mint glued to a card that says, "We enjoy keeping your home in mint condition."  The ongoing relationship your team reinforces by leaving a personal note on every cleaning day is another little "extra" they didn't expect when they hired you -- "We love the new living room suite," or "We see Mitzi visited the dog groomer this week ...so cute," or "We included the baseboards in our rotational schedule this week." 

I strongly encourage you to get a copy of Jim's book on Relationship Selling.  In the meantime, on your next sales call think of the meeting with your prospective client as the beginning of a long and mutually rewarding relationship and not a mere dollars and cents transaction.  When you, too, adopt this philosophy you're going to find the process far more relaxed and the prospect much more comfortable.