We are being surrounded by technology today, so much so that people have almost forgotten how to make face-to-face contact with customers, prospects, suppliers and their own offices. Who would have thought twenty-five years ago that salespeople couldn’t get along without their Blackberry, laptop or PC in the office? In 1980, the height of technology was a pager.  That device was replaced over the years by greater technology in the form of cell phones, Blackberries, palm-sized computers and a host of other electronic marvels. These gadgets are great, but they should be used to assist not replace sales technology. In the “olden days” of salesmanship, it required a face-to-face contact to initiate the sales call, make the presentation, offer the close and follow-up on either the sale or the next step in the sales process. Nowadays, it is the technology that performs many of these tasks.

Sometimes it takes years for a salesperson to learn the basic rules of the game because no one has written them down. Or at least no one has written them down as “rules.” Older salespeople while training the new ones will often impart these gems of sales wisdom, but most sales training courses only touch briefly on some of these principles and then only in passing. Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies has enumerated The Seven Paradoxical Sales Principles, all of which may be found in the unwritten, unpublished Old Salesman’s Book of Knowledge.

The human body cures cancer every day. Cancer is not a tumor. A tumor is a mass of mutated cells that are the result of the body not ridding itself of old cells when new cells are produced. Cell production is a natural process that occurs every day to replace worn and used up cells. Most cells divide at a controlled rate and die off when they are supposed to (atoptsis), but when so many new cells are created there are some errors. These damaged cells divide at a faster rate than normal. This is cancer. About a million of these occur every day in the average body, but the body’s defenses eliminate the damaged cells, preventing or curing a potentially cancerous tumor. In short, cancer is simply a process where the mutated cells grow faster than the body’s ability to kill them. Eventually, these cells form a tumor.

Salespeople are a superstitious lot. They are in a business that relies mostly on personal interaction, regardless of the product being represented. Liken their thinking to that of the baseball power-hitter who has a streak going and won’t change anything (even his underwear) for fear of breaking the magic spell.  Salespeople are prone to adopt and adhere to many similar superstitions to prolong a selling streak or to try to understand the magical rules of their game, selling. Interestingly enough, many of these old saws have some basis in fact.