-- tim mcmahon

I got a call the other day from a friend who's been a sales rep for a lot of years. His company was bought out and he and the entire sales force were laid off. Dave's in his mid 50's and he's really worried about finding a new sales position. "Who's going to want to hire a guy my age? Everybody wants to hire the young guys!"

My Dad was a salesman his entire life. He "retired" in his late 60's and immediately started a second completely unrelated sales career with a local financial institution ... selling home mortgages. (Whether this was due to his love of selling or my mother desperately wanting him out of the house is still up for debate, but anyway ...) The bank that hired him was a little concerned, also thinking that sales was a young man's game. They wondered if he would have the drive and energy (and endurance) the job demanded. But in the years that followed he was consistently their #1 top producer and never failed to bring home a six-figure income.

"Who knew you had all that energy?" I once said to him, laughing. But his reply was, "I don't have half the energy of those young guys and I only work about half as much as they do". "So what's your secret," I asked.

"Everybody else runs from real estate agency to real estate agency dropping off their mortgage rate sheets because they think the mortgage rate is what the agencies care about. I spend my time with the brokers and agency owners to show them how I can help them get more mortgage applications approved and have more sales close successfully for them. That's what the brokers really value and that's why the brokers send all their mortgage applications to me instead of the other guy. It makes my job pretty easy, really."

Dad knew something pretty important: the ability to create customer value is the secret of selling ... and it only gets better with age and experience. He passed on a few years ago in his mid-70's, still selling every day. He always planned to write his own book on sales ... he was just too busy closing deals to ever get around to finishing it.