The Pursuit of Happyness is a movie about a man, Chris Gardner, and his struggles and eventual triumph. Chris Gardner was a sales man for portal bone-density scanners, but they were not selling. His wife left him and their son, he could not afford rent, and him and his son lived in homeless shelters and the streets. Gardner took an internship at Dean Witter Reynolds, a stock brokage firm, and this could potentially lead to a stable job for him. The clip below depicts him making cold calls. Everyone was given a list, and they are supposed to work from the bottom up, and basically get the approval from each level before advancing to someone that would actually make the decisions. However, Gardner decides to try something different. He realized he was wasting time talking to people who had no authority in making a decision, so he jumped to the top of the list.
In class, we have talked about making sure that all parties involved in making the decision are communicated with. For example, John Porter talked about making sure to talk to both the husband and the wife when investing in his firm. This is because if only the husband was clued in and he was to die or they two would divorce, then the wife would probably take her business elsewhere. This is the same concept with Gardner. It is like he is talking to the five year old child, instead of talking to the parents. The people at the bottom of the list have no decision making power, so he decided to clue in the “parents.” The people near the bottom of the list have no pain, but it is the person at the top that has the pain. Gardner is able to identify that and jump on it. He will continue to form relationships in the movie, and be able to make the sale not based on the features, but rather his relationship with the decision making buyer.
Aliyah Shelatz