The argument that salespeople are born and not made is partly true, but mainly false. The element of falsity lies in the fact that those who make the statement forget that a strong personality can be cultivated.

This would be a sorry world indeed, if the only respects in which you could improve yourself were those the measure of which may be taken by the yard stick, the computer, and the scales. It is illogical and unworthy of belief that it is possible to improve in knowledge by study and impossible to improve personality and character in the same way. You may broaden and deepen your inner self just as you may add to your knowledge of facts or to your bank account.

• Can we say that you can study your products or services and increase your knowledge of them, but that it is impossible for you to increase your understanding of yourself?
• Can we say that you can analyze your customer’s state of mind and learn to understand it, but not be able to increase your own power to win the customer’s mind over to yourself?

The fact is that personality, like everything else in the world, is not a vague, intangible, indescribable, undefinable, nebulous, hazy attribute of a person, but is in truth a definite and positive factor of a person’s being that is capable of being improved by direct and practical methods.

There is no more absurd and dangerous opinion for the sales person to have than that a good personality is purely a “gift” in the sense that it cannot be acquired.

The idea that you can learn only by experience is an especially absurd and dangerous idea when applied to character building. The whole history of the world’s advancement disproves it, for we are able to advance beyond what others have accomplished by learning what they know, and making our start from that point.

Lessons are expensive, and the person who is incapable of learning except by personal experience usually finds himself at the end of his rope before he has finished obtaining his tuition. The person who learns by experience is far ahead of him to whom his past teaches nothing; but he is just as far behind the cool-headed person who knows how to profit by the experiences of others.

But right here is a point that is important: in judging the experiences of others, you must judge them scientifically, through the microscope of facts and figures, and learn exactly why certain causes produce certain results. If your judgments are influenced by fear instead of science, you will argue failure because you have seen failure; and fear is our worst enemy.

Measure yourself by acts and results, not by people. Accept not the results attained by others, but the relation between acts and results; and accept them, when they are plain and certain, without putting your own fingers in the fire. This isn’t necessary.

Please vote in our poll on the right-hand side bar on the website. What do you think – are sales people born or made?

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