Dan Hudock, and the performing Salesmen
A few weeks ago, Dan Hudock was a guest speaker for our class. He brought a lot of interesting concepts to the table, but one thing that really stuck out to me was something he quoted: “Sales is a Broadway play performed by a psychologist,” (David Sandler). I think this quote has some really interesting things to say about salesmen.
The first half of the quote talks about a play. Sales can be, in a sense, acting. One way of seeing sales as acting that is really helpful is it brings out the concept of the role you which we have talked about before. This really helps with buoyancy. It shows you that you yourself are not a failure, but that the “role you,” the one that was supposed to attempt the sale is the one who failed, not yourself. This really helps with not feeling like a failure and bouncing back after no’s.
I think the psychologist aspect of it really relates to attunement and the whole selling process. It is really helpful in sales to understand where the other person is coming from, and the whole selling process is really spent thinking about the customer. This is where psychology comes in. Those were my two biggest takeaways from Dan’s lecture.
I thought Dan’s presentation on the ‘role you’ was really interesting too. Especially how he has given himself a sales persona (I want to say it was Bronco Insanity or something like that). I found it amusing but can also see how assuming a role like that can give a salesperson confidence. Great post!
What a great post! I like how you said that sales in a way is just a form of acting because as you said it really does help with the confidence factor and the bounce back when things do not always go to your liking.
Elliot, you did a great post! I totally agree, selling really is a form of acting and it is interesting to think of it that way.