STILL MORE EXCHANGES ON "HOW TO SELL FURNITURE TO A WALK IN"!

STILL MORE EXCHANGES ON “HOW TO SELL FURNITURE TO A WALK IN”!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© February 6, 2010

Reference: I have known this person for twenty years and have watched him grow and develop into a major organizational development player in the most critical human services business, a business that often comes in for heavy criticism but a business that deals with the forgotten, neglected, the disadvantaged, the lost, and the innocent.

At one point in my career, I was consultant to an organization with which he was affiliated. He took me to a nursing clinic of HIV babies who were brought into the world with the disease and were struggling for life against incredible odds. I couldn’t rid my mind of that image for days. Yet I took solace in the fact that there were people, quietly unobtrusively and with dedication, working hard to make life a possibility. In my book, these are the famous men and women of our society.

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A READER WRITES:

Dear Jim:

Your exchanges below are very interesting to me. I have never had a "sales job" per se, but have sold all my life. You know that my career has been primarily in non-profit organizations and for the last 10 years in a quasi-government agency.

In my 35+ year career now, my primary focus has been on connecting with the needs of my customer be it a neighborhood organization, child, youth, parent, school, volunteer, donor, co-worker, Executive Director or CEO. If I understand what their challenges are and use my knowledge and skills to assist them in meeting their challenges, then I/we will be successful in overcoming their difficulties and achieving success for all involved.

I have been fortunate to see the positive results of my "sales" in the number of successful projects, people (including members of our 1992, 1996 and 2000 US Olympic Weightlifting Teams, and organizations that I've had the pleasure and opportunity to work with since 1976 when I entered the workforce after college graduation.

It's never been about the money! There is no money for many of us who choose to commit to a life of service first and reward second. If you become good and successful at service to others, hopefully financial success will follow.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay

Back in the early 90's I read Living Happily Ever After - Creating Trust, Luck and Joy by Marsha Sinetar who also wrote Do what you love, the money will follow. Some of your readers will probably scoff at this, but I agree with much of what she has to say. When we are satisfied and happy with what we are doing it comes effortlessly and when we are not it becomes "work". And when it becomes "work" we need to move on!

That's my 2 cents and all I'm saying!

Be well!

Buddy

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Buddy,

Thank you for sharing. You are indeed correct your job has been one of selling as was and is that the case of the NASA scientist.

The product you are selling is humanity as the product of the scientist was and is ergonomics and safety. Neither of you are in the glamour business; neither of you will have your pictures on the front pages of newspapers for your efforts with scores of journalists anxious to interview you; neither of you are most likely to have history books written about you, but without you and your contributions society perishes.

You are the underpinning of all that is right and good and necessary for survival as a race and culture.

That said I was interested in your reference to Marsha Sinetar’s “Do What You Love and The Money Will Follow.”

When I read the book, I made a call to her home. How I got the number I don’t remember, but I talked to her husband. He said she was rarely home. That was long before the Internet, but now I find she has written several books and is highly in demand across the world.

Sinetar takes a decidedly spiritual approach to capitalism with grace, insight and amazing originality. I say that because the title, alone, is devastatingly accurate in that a career is a journey not an end, a process not a product, not a motivation to become well heeled to a financially secure retirement but the joy of work being love made visible. I have not read “Living Happily Ever After,” but I’m sure it is loaded with insights.

Your final comment is only too true. When work no longer breathes new life and energy into us, when it no longer is love made visible, we should indeed move on.

I hope your short sabbatical was invigorating. As you know I took a two-year sabbatical in my mid-thirties when work was no longer a love affair, and then went back to school for six years looking for answers. None were found. What I did learn, after reading Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero of a Thousand Faces,” that we must follow our bliss. In my case that has been writing, a career in which I have yet to earn the minimum wage, but I have found happiness whereas I never did when I was making the big bucks.

You are ahead of the curve, and I salute you for it.

Be always well,

Jim

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