Marketing Lessons From My Bosses, Part 5

When it comes to sales, I have never believed there was a “right” way. There’s the way that works for you, that’s all.

I have seen sales­peo­ple with com­pletely oppo­site approaches suc­ceed. Sales­man #1 takes the prospect’s hand in both of his and mur­murs softly about his reli­gious com­mit­ment. It works every time! Sales­man #2 grabs the prospect by the neck­tie, pounds his fist on the table and shouts “You have to do this for your kids!” And that too, works every time.

Mod­el­ing behav­iors that suc­ceed for oth­ers is often good advice, but in the end the best advice is to be yourself.

In 1988, I was work­ing at the Miami News. The City Edi­tor (and there­fore my imme­di­ate boss) was a guy named Paul Kaplan.

One day he saun­tered up to my desk and said “I need some­one to go up to Starke tonight and wit­ness an exe­cu­tion.” Starke was the loca­tion of Florida State Prison.

“Not me,” I said, flatly, know­ing full well that refus­ing an assign­ment was not an option.
“Why?” Kaplan sneered. “Are you say­ing you’re too sen­si­tive to see a man put to death?”

Good news­pa­per reporters then, as now, I imag­ine, are loath to say that they are too sen­si­tive for any­thing. It goes against the code of the intre­pid reporter. It is not very macho, which is also part of the code.

Kaplan taunted me again. “Are you say­ing you’re too sen­si­tive to wit­ness an execution?”

“Yes,” I replied. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

He sighed.

“Me too,” he said, and walked away in search of another reporter.

Mar­ket­ing les­son: As Oscar Wilde said, “Be your­self, every­one else is taken.”