Friday, February 27, 2009

Interact first, sell second!

The panhandler's secret

from Seth's Blog by Seth Godin

When there were old-school parking meters in New York, quarters were precious.

One day, I'm walking down the street and a guy comes up to me and says, "Do you have a dollar for four quarters?" He held out his hand with four quarters in it.

Curious, I engaged with him. I took out a dollar bill and took the four quarters.

Then he turned to me and said, "can you spare a quarter?"

What a fascinating interaction.

First, he engaged me. A fair trade, one that perhaps even benefited me, not him.

Now, we have a relationship. Now, he knows I have a quarter (in my hand, even). So his next request is much more difficult to turn down. If he had just walked up to me and said, "can you spare a quarter," he would have been invisible.

Too often, we close the sale before we even open it.

Interact first, sell second.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Interesting take on our current situation

Jared Diamond is one of my most respected authors. Here is a piece on PBS where he discusses the current state of our society.

The key point I took away was that if people who make decisions are isolated from the impacts of those decisions, then they will inevitably make poor choices.

Are our current lawmakers isolated from the financial crisis?