FOR SALES' SAKE MEDITATE!

The salesman is faced with just as many variables to contend with as is the actor. He must work within widely differing markets and customers. He must blend his personal attributes and abilities harmoniously within many varied selling situations and different personalities. However, he does not get a second chance at it. The salesman who is naturally being positive does not need to think of psyching himself up any more than a real king has to put attention on being a king. It is not possible to effectively handle a wide range of variables with which a salesman is confronted through rehearsals or by hyping up the salesman via positive-thinking-type inspirational and motivational programs. But, isn't this what today's sales training programs try to accomplish?

Getting back to the sales seminar I attended: After the company president spoke, his assistant made a speech. It was well delivered, but there was an obvious difference between his presentation and that of the president. All gestures and speech inflections appeared contrived and forced. He was not operating from the same level as was the president. He was acting, imitating, and trying to be as good as his boss. I, as the potential customer, could sense this. Your customers sense it when you put on an act for them just as easily as you know an act when you see one. The firm's president was natural. He was being himself, and he was terrific. I am sure he felt terrific as a result of being terrific. The assistant was a poor imitation, althought he undoubtedly deluded himself to think that he too was terrific.

A poor man can tell himself that he is rich and get to believe it, but it will not change his poverty, only his mood. In fact, thinking himself to be rich he may not feel the need to do something about his poverty. How many people live in self-deluding fantasies of one type or another? They are like the proverbial ostrich that sticks his head in the sand. His altered perspective brings him comfort. However, others can still see the situation for what it is. A person can be hypnotized not to feel pain. A blowtorch can then be put to him. He might not feel the pain, but damage will certainly result.

I am not against positive thinking. Of course, everyone should think in positive terms. I maintain, however, that positive thinking should have its basis in that deep inner status of being positive. Positive thinking should not be a mood that is painted on one's psyche by daily pep talks. That is delusion and operates on the horizontal thinking level of the mind. Sales training programs lack the vertical depth required to enable one to become positive from within himself, be it, and express it from that inner level.

Since the philosophy of positive thinking is incomplete, the results must be incomplete. In order to develop a supersalesman - and super means 'totally developed' - we must have a holistic teaching. And the test of the efficacy of that holistic teaching will be in its ability to develop supersalesmen. The knowledge for the holistic development of the individual is the ancient key to success, dealt with in greater detail in the next chapter.