I have a friend who has always had slightly skewed social graces. On the other hand, he has been roleplaying since he was 14 and can tell you the odds on any 3d6 combination off the top of his head.
When he became a salesman, we were all rather surprised and chortled amongst ourselves at how, with his underwhelming social skills, he would surely flounder.
He then proceeded to be the best salesman at his company, by wide margin.
How? He minimaxed their system. It was as simple as that. He sat down with the product list and the comp rules and calculated the best possible combinations of items and only sold those combinations. He would sell other items too, but when customers bought them, he would not ring up the sale himself -- he would send them to the front counter and ask that they not mention his name.
My own path to salesmanship was to study the psychology side. Influence by Robert Cialdini was my bible and it propelled me into the top of my own company's ranks by applying some modest mental judo. I made it a rule to never lie or fabricate, but I still sold up a storm in a completely different way from my friend.
When you look at selling as a game, geeks with a roleplaying background are going to dominate because they will experiment, minimax, tweak and study their way to maximising returns.
Sometimes selling certain items + other items had a rule leading to a higher percentage. For example, an external HDD could be included with a PC at a discount, but the salesman gets a commission based on the ordinary RRP. Because of the arcane ways some commissions are calculated, this would raise his margin on the deal overall, leading to a higher commission on the PC as well. Not the intention of the retail company he worked for -- but that wasn't his problem.
Lots of little rules and promotions are constantly coming and going in retail, and my friend was quite single-minded about optimising for them.
When he became a salesman, we were all rather surprised and chortled amongst ourselves at how, with his underwhelming social skills, he would surely flounder.
He then proceeded to be the best salesman at his company, by wide margin.
How? He minimaxed their system. It was as simple as that. He sat down with the product list and the comp rules and calculated the best possible combinations of items and only sold those combinations. He would sell other items too, but when customers bought them, he would not ring up the sale himself -- he would send them to the front counter and ask that they not mention his name.
My own path to salesmanship was to study the psychology side. Influence by Robert Cialdini was my bible and it propelled me into the top of my own company's ranks by applying some modest mental judo. I made it a rule to never lie or fabricate, but I still sold up a storm in a completely different way from my friend.
When you look at selling as a game, geeks with a roleplaying background are going to dominate because they will experiment, minimax, tweak and study their way to maximising returns.