Truth about sales
An excerpt from an article about building rapport with customers and clients.
“In a face-to-face initial customer meeting, the prospect instantly assesses all the different elements of your appearance and how you present yourself, and then unconsciously determines whether you’re a potential friend and thus worthy of rapport. In that situation, the qualities of your voice (pitch, tonality, accent, word choice, enunciation, etc.) play an important role, but they’re only part of overall package, and often a relatively unimportant one.
For example, I knew a sales rep at the now-defunct Honeywell Information Systems who had one of the most annoying voices I’ve ever heard in the business world. It wasn’t as grating as Fran Drescher’s character in the TV show “The Nanny” but it was pretty close. However, she knew how to dress and present herself in a way that was at once extremely professional and also rather glamorous. In face to face meetings with customers — who were almost exclusively male engineers — she was dynamite partly because she was knowledgeable and well prepared, but also because she looked like somebody whom they’d definitely want to, uh…, date.
NOTE: That may sound sexist, but it brings out an important truth about rapport, which is that when rapport exists between potential sexual partners, it almost always has an unspoken sexual component. This subject, while largely taboo, is of incredible importance when it comes to rapport building, and I’ll be discussing it in a future post.”
Source: http://blogs.bnet.com/salesmachine/?p=128&tag=nl.e808
So thats why lots of pharmaceutical companies like to hire girls - former cheerleaders, waitresses, customer service people - to do sales…. Instant “rapport” and interest from customers (who are primarily men).
So girls, if you’re not really sure what you want to do with your career and find that people relate to you very well you should consider sales. Oh and hitting up the gym and getting a makeover before your interview will help too.
Bottom Line:
If you want to be a good sales person, be sexy.