Story of Day :: Selling most valuable lesson

Peace Steemians,

A man who owned a clothing store wanted to his son to take over (phrasal verb meaning to take control of something) the business.

So he told his son to come to the store to learn how to sell clothes.

The son was eager to run the shop, but declined the lesson in sales.

"Dad, selling is easy," he said. "You just give people what they need. And I already know how to do that!"

"Is that right?" the father replied. "Then take this suitcase full of some of our finest suits to the next town and call me when you've sold them all."

Source

The son left with the suitcase and was incredibly excited when he arrived at the next town because nearly everyone in was dressed in old, worn clothing.

"This is the PERFECT place to sell these great suits!" he thought, smiling to himself.

But after a few days and no sales, the young man began to wonder what was wrong with everyone.

"ALL of these people have such old, torn clothing. Surely they need the replace their old clothes with my nice suits."

But no matter how hard he tried, even with people who had money for his suits, the young man sold nothing.

Disappointed, he finally called his father, who told his son to return home if he was finally ready to learn how to sell.

Source

When the son returned, the father explained that he had sent him to the town knowing that he wouldn't sell any suits.

"You didn't sell any suits because no one wanted one. What did you see when you looked at the people in that town?" he asked.

"Well, I saw a lot of farmers, and everyone was dressed in old, plain clothing. Shouldn't this be a great place to sell suits? Wouldn't they need what we have?"

"In a town like that," his father explained, "people don't want expensive suits. They're happy with what they have. But what people do buy a lot of over there is ham and bacon, even though everyone keeps their own pigs!"

"But that doesn't make any sense!" complained the son. "You're saying I should be selling our suits to people who already have nice suits?"

"Exactly! Think about how many books you have. You have many more than you could possibly ever read, but you buy new ones all the time."

The son thought for a moment and then said, "But I NEED all of those books! Each one can teach me something new."

"I'm sure that's true," said the father, "but you don't honestly need them. You WANTED those books, so you convinced yourself you needed them when you saw them at the store. Likely, you'd be just fine without them, just like the men who purchase more than one of our suits. But our customers WANT to have options. They want a suit for work and one for church on Sundays. They one a fancy one for dinner with their wives, and something more casual for meetings with friends."

Source

The son thought some more.

"So, we serve our customers by giving them what THEY want, not what WE think they need?"

"That's the first rule of selling," said the father, proud to see his son learning this most valuable lesson. "Now you're ready to help people find the perfect suit!"

The things that seem obvious usually don't what get us the results we want.