My pensieve

Original source: http://gpraveenkumar.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/the-best-salesman-ever/

A keen immigrant Indian Marwadi lad applied for a salesman’s job at London ‘s premier downtown department store. In fact, it was the biggest store in the world – you could get anything there.

The boss asked him, “Have you ever been a salesman before?” “Yes sir, I was a salesman in India “, replied the lad. The boss liked the cut of him and said, “You can start tomorrow and I’ll come and see you.”

The day was long and arduous for the young man, but he got through it. And finally 6:00 PM came around. The boss duly fronted up and asked, “How many sales did you make today?” “Sir, Just ONE sale.” said the young salesman. “Only one sale?” blurted the boss. “No! No! You see here, most of my staff make 20 or 30 sales a day. “If you want to keep this job, you’d better be doing better than just one sale. By the way “How much was the sale worth?”

93300534.00 pounds” said the young Marwadi. “What”,” How did you manage that?” asked the flabbergasted boss.

“Well”, said the salesman, “This man came in and I sold him a small fish hook, then a medium hook and finally a really large hook. Then I sell him new fishing rod and some fishing gear. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast. So I told him he’d be needing a boat, so I took him down to the boat department and sold him that twenty-foot schooner with the twin engines. Then he said his Volkswagen probably wouldn’t be able to pull it, so I took him to our automotive department and sold him that new Deluxe 4X4 Blazer.

I then asked him where he’ll be staying, and since he had no accommodation, I took him to camping department and sold him one of those new igloo 6-sleeper camper tents. Then the guy said, while we’re at it, I should throw in about $100 worth of groceries and two cases of beer.

The boss took two steps back and asked in astonishment, “You sold all that to a guy who came in for a fish hook!!”

“No” answered the salesman, “he came in to buy a headache relief tablet and I said to him, “Sir, fishing is best headache removal”

Boss – “You sit in my chair…….

Moral of the story::
According to me, the salesman was able to make that sale not because of his convincing power or ability to sale but due to his ability to understand the complete use case for the customer. A normal salesman would have sold the tablet that he was asked for and be happy but this salesman actually tried to understand the customer’s problem and helped him to solve the problem. Again this can become true only in ideal scenarios where a salesman has time enough to understand the customer problem. But I think it is a good quality for a salesman to have.