CONNECTABILITY

The art of selling—and much else in life—is all about relationships, according to this soulful business self-helper.

Steck, a former partner at Goldman Sachs investment bank, looks back on his career selling securities to extract lessons on cultivating long-term personal relationships with customers. These include the importance of face-to-face meetings, which convey far more engagement, rapport, and nuance than screen-mediated, emoji-strewn texts (or even Zoom calls). Empathy is a must for understanding a prospect’s perspective, the author asserts, and requires attentive listening. (Steck recommends taking careful notes with pen and notebook rather than laptop or smartphone so customers can see you are listening to them and not fiddling with an app.) Salespeople must be willing to take calculated risks and show some vulnerability, the author argues, starting with the ordeal of cold-calling and the agonizing likelihood of demoralizing rejection. (On the epic end of the risk-taking spectrum, one Goldman Sachs executive managed to pitch an aloof prospect by somehow booking the seat right next to him on a trans-Pacific flight.) Assiduous following-up with contacts is crucial to building the relationship and closing a sale, Steck contends; 80 percent of sales require an average of five follow-ups, yet 44 percent of salespeople give up after just one follow-up, he reports. Keeping an account requires persistent study of the client’s industry and needs—this enables salespeople to make creative suggestions on improving the business. Most of all, selling requires dogged commitment to the relationship; Steck spent time chatting and spit-balling ideas with one client with nothing to show for it…until, out of the blue, he decided to buy $200 million worth of securities.

This brief for business humanism stresses virtuous salesmanship that strives to understand people and treat them well. The author illustrates his argument with winsome anecdotes about passionate restaurateurs, inn-keepers, and other entrepreneurs, as well as his own adventures training quarter horses at his ranch. (Winning over clients, he suggests, is a lot like getting a skittish colt to accept a saddle blanket on his back for the first time.) Steck distills his pointers on building sales relationships into pithy aphorisms: “The goal of the first meeting should simply be to introduce yourself, learn more about the person in front of you, and get a second meeting.” There is, at times, a lyrical, almost spiritual quality to Steck’s writing when it pays homage to the sacredness of the ordinary: “I find a greater return, both in sales and my personal life, when I remember to be present and available to what is at hand—at a red light, in conversation with my server over the wine list, talking to a loved one, chatting with the man operating the garbage truck on my street, or checking out at the grocery store. These moments all have gifts to give, when I extend myself to give and receive them.” Contrary to the stock image of desperate men sweating bullets and cutting throats for a sale, Steck offers the reassuring possibility that salesmanship can be a path to human connectedness and fulfillment.

An insightful commentary on the work of a salesman that conveys homespun wisdom in colorful prose.