Why I Read Books

Now that you have read just two pages in less than two minutes, please go back and re-read the bit about ""... attempts to reach the policy holder were fruitless". "letters" and "telephone" suggests a period of four weeks or more - but then TaDa! Why not ask around; after four weeks someone has seen or heard of a way to establish contact.

There follows a page that indicates that the salesman knows his material; figures are prepared. "Management Measures", and the salesman wants to be in control to make the sale; the salesman must manage the conversation, and that means measurements, in this case, numeric quantifiers.

Please re-read the last sentence of the paragraph at the head of the second page. "If I can stay under $100 that'd be OK". The client has stated a goal, out loud; all our hero must do is achieve that goal, not any other goal, the client's stated goal. At this point it matters not a whit which policy is sold; to make a sale our hero need only select the one that offers premiums that bring him under the $100 goal.

At the end of the second paragraph on that second page, client objections have died down. It is time to Close The Sale, and at the start of the third paragraph, our client pulls out a piece of paper. "If it ain't written down, it don't exist".

At the foot of the third paragraph a cheque is written. "Business is the exchange of two pieces of paper, one of which MUST be a cheque".

The deal is done.

So What's the Point?

Obviously I've bought myself a "How to Make Sales" self-help book for Christmas and I'm ploughing through it, right?

Wrong. As Richard Dawkins says "Utterly Wrong!".

I am half-way through a 400-page book.

In the flyleaf is written "Grandpa Xmas 87".

Not me.

My friend Betty's mother's husband, John, he who died some 14 years ago, and Mum has hung onto his books.

Mum passed away February 2009, and Betty knows I read books.

So amongst five cartons of books (four cartons of which I kept) is "Risky Business" by Rod McQueen; Macmillan 1985.

25 years later I am learning about selling myself as a consultant (and a whole lot of other stuff) from a book describing the Canadian Insurance Industry a quarter of a century ago.

For Free.