I’ve only just got around to watching “The Pursuit of Happyness” with actor, Will Smith.
Incredibly sad movie for me.
It’s meant to be a movie about success, about the American Dream, where an on-and-off homeless salesman Chris Gardner risks all to stay with his young son, and make it into the high-flying world of stockbroking.
Despite the Happy ending, it’s a sad movie.
The marriage break-up is sad.
The homelessness is sad (and I am told it is even more realistic because many of the “actors” in the line waiting for the homeless shelter were in fact real homeless people.)
The troubles that happen in the story are saddening too.
But for me there was one further sadness that hit me from the way the movie portraited Chris Garnder.
Chris was training to be a “stockbroker”, when in fact he was merely being a powerhouse salesperson.
No knowledge of the underlying businesses was required. No knowledge of accounting. No knowledge of the industries. None of that.
Just an ability to network and sell people.
That’s sad.
It reminds me of Robert Kiyosaki saying, “The reason so many financial advisers are called brokers is because they are often broker than you” and Warren Buffet commenting, “Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.”
Don’t just be a salesperson. Be something else first and foremost, so the sales skills will make sense.
Both you, and your customers, and their word of mouth recommendations will be better for it.
-Martin Russell
One Comment
Martin,
I have wanted to get in touch with you for a long time. In fact after purchasing WoM Magic, I was a little disappointed that you did not “try to upsell me” – and I was eagerly anticipating your next product. You cannot imagine how pleased I was when you announced that you were starting this blog a little while back… after years of not hearing from you, that email reminded me immediately, who you were and the tremendous lesson I had learned from you: Incidentally, that lesson had nothing to do with Word of Mouth… it had to do with INTEGRITY!
You don’t have to be a ruthless shark to be successful (in a “karmic” sense, that even works against you), you just have to know how to bring something useful and meaningful to people’s lives and use your sales skill to do that. As a result you will be rewarded for that – PLENTY….
Your post demonstrates once again why I felt an affinity to your work and the element of integrity that it displays…
Keep on posting…
Best Ilya
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