Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
A territory built on curiosity
There was no internet, so everything he learned about his territory came from curiosity. After selling a system to a dress store with a shoplifting problem, he found out that the owner's cousin ran a health and beauty store across town and that the owner's best customer ran a food store. He kept connecting dots like that, one relationship leading to the next.
Competing with yourself
Selling was risky, because more often than not the answer was no. It taught him to put himself out there, and to compete against his own number: whatever he sold last week, he wanted to beat a little this week, with nobody else to beat.
The shoe store lesson
A shoe store gave him the model for doing it well. The salesperson brought out everything from the back room, but the only two questions that mattered were whether the shoes fit and whether he liked them. A great salesperson imagines being the customer, asks what that person would want right now, and answers the question the customer actually has, sometimes helping them find it.
How do electronic anti-shoplifting tags work?
Electronic article surveillance tags contain a small circuit that resonates at a set radio frequency. Antennas at the store exit emit that frequency, and a tag passing through disturbs the field and sets off an alarm. At the register, a clerk deactivates the tag or removes it. The technology came into commercial use in the 1960s.
Why do top salespeople ask so many questions?
Neil Rackham's research, published in his 1988 book SPIN Selling, analyzed more than 35,000 sales calls over about twelve years. He found that in large, complex sales, successful salespeople asked more questions about the buyer's problems and the consequences of those problems. Those questions let buyers state the need themselves. In small sales, the same patterns mattered much less.