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The Golden Rule of
selling
by Christopher Michael from Spirituality.com
After dropping out of college in 1973, I
took a job selling women's shoes in the
mall. In my brief career as a shoe salesman,
I learned three important lessons: 1. The
best salespeople were artists who danced
with their customers—always anticipating
their next move.
2. I was never going to be a great shoe
salesman. 3. The Golden Rule works—even in a
sales situation.
The assistant manager of
the store where I worked was a master of his
craft. He could find any shoe in the store
with only the vaguest description and always
had two alternatives to suggest if a
customer's first choice was unavailable. He
could handle half a dozen customers at
once—circling the room taking sizes and
requests, picking up the discards, darting
into the stockroom to emerge moments later
with dozens of shoeboxes that he dispensed
like a blackjack dealer lays down cards.
There was a problem, however, with the
assistant manager's management. In theory,
sales people took turns waiting on
customers. In practice, the assistant
manager took the customers who looked the
most prosperous. Anyone he judged to have
little buying potential—or worse, wanted to
return something—he'd hand off to one of the
rest of us. Sometimes he would take two or
three customers in a row before giving one
away.
He was taking money out of our pockets,
and it wasn't right for him to treat us
differently than he'd want to be treated. I
tried to talk to him but got nowhere—he
needed the money. I tried talking to the
store manager. He was sympathetic, but not
willing to press the issue—after all, the
assistant manager was his best salesperson.
There just didn't seem to be anything I
could do in the face of the assistant
manager's aggressive tactics.
An "equal share of unlimited" seemed better
than a "smaller part of scarce."
Eventually I
upset myself enough that I thought I'd
better pray about it. It seemed to me that I
had two choices: I could see us as competing
for a limited number of customers and accept
that the more powerful person would always
take more. Or I could focus on spiritual
facts that named us both as equal recipients
of God's unlimited goodness. An "equal share
of unlimited" seemed better than a "smaller
part of scarce," but it was tough to hold on
to that idea while watching the assistant
manager in action.
I asked a friend I often turned to for
spiritual guidance what was the spiritual
opposite of the aggression I saw in the
assistant manager.
"Acceptance," my friend said.
"Acceptance?" I thought.
It wasn't what I was expecting to hear—it
seemed so
turn-the-other-cheek-and-get-slapped-again
wimpy. I was looking for something bold and
powerful.
"Accept that God's will is being done,"
he added.
Oh. That acceptance. I was going
to have to think about it.
Oddly enough, when I thought about it,
acceptance did seem to be the right answer.
I realized that I'd been thinking I had to
fix something that was broken—another
person, myself, a situation—when what I
needed to do was accept that the law of God,
good, was in complete control. I felt
relieved.
Apparently he's found her wanting on the
"I'm going to buy-o-meter."
But, I'm back
at work the next day and nothing seems to
have changed. The assistant manager is
sizing up a woman entering the store. I can
almost hear the gears turning as he does the
calculations. Apparently he's found her
wanting on the "I'm going to buy-o-meter"
since he's signaling me to wait on her.
She has a list of shoes she wants
to try on, but half an hour later, despite a
growing wall of rejected shoeboxes, there's
no sale in sight. The assistant manager
motions me over: "Cut her off. She's running
ya."
Privately I agree with his assessment—I'm
waiting on one of those incomprehensible
people who actually enjoys trying on (but
not purchasing) shoes. But I decide to stick
to God's promise that His will leads only to
good. It was my job to help people buy
shoes, and I certainly wouldn't want a
salesperson to tell me that I was taking up
too much of his time if I were buying shoes.
So, I keep bringing out boxes. I didn't let
go of the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as
you would have them do unto you." (See links
below.) Obeying the rule meant everyone
would be taken care of.
An indecisive hour later (maybe more,
maybe less, I don't know), it feels to me
like she's tried on every shoe in her
size—in addition to having indulged in some
serious wishful thinking regarding the
physics of foot compressibility versus the
elasticity of shoes.
And she still can't decide among her
favorites.
So, she buys them all!
(It was the biggest single sale in my
career as a shoe salesman.)
