jim.shamlin.com

Preface

The author's examination of generations began as anthropology, merely observing and reporting the differences among the culture of various generations in the workplace. An executive with General Electric attended one of his lectures, and asked him to develop a presentation for his sales force: "It makes sense that if these generations have such strong biases about their workplaces that they may also have some biases about the sales process."

The chief problem with sales is that it assumed that the customer and the salesman have the same cultural values, and the salesman will make assumptions about his customer - specifically, that he knows the reasons a customer will like a product because they are the same reason he would like it if he were in the customer's situation.

(EN: The same is true for any human interaction - when approaching another person, a person expects them to think and act the way that he would think and act himself. Failure to understand that other people think and act differently is the source of much misunderstanding.)

When the salesman and the customer are of the same culture, they generally have the same values and motivational factors, and the pitch will be well received. It's always easiest, hence most pleasant, to do business with someone who is like yourself.

When the salesman and the customer are of different cultures, the pitch will not be on-target. This is (generally) obvious when selling to foreign markets, and salesmen understand that they must adjust their pitch to suit the foreign culture. It is less obvious when selling in a domestic market to a person whose culture is slightly different.

Effective selling means getting into the customer's frame of mind - understanding what they think and what they value rather than assuming their beliefs and values to be essentially the same as your own.

Explaining the full scope of "culture" is beyond the scope of this book, which focuses exclusively on the generational characteristics of the American market - but at the same time, it is a very significant and much neglected subject, as it deals with those subtle differences among people in the same nation and community that are often overlooked.

In essence, a salesman can be more effective if he can recognize the tendencies of the different generations, as well as his own cultural biases.

(EN: A bit of heartburn: the author suggests that a salesman can become like his prospect - but I disagree completely. A person's own culture is deeply ingrained, and while it is not indelible, he cannot "be like" every person he meets, switching from one culture to another with each encounter. Many salesmen will try to "act like" a person of another culture, but this is disingenuous, offensive, and/or pathetic and impersonating another person's values, which is impersonating a stereotype of the other person's culture, does more to damage credibility and trust than to build it. The best you can do is to demonstrate that you have a genuine understanding and respect for the culture of others, to speak to their values, but not pretend that you share them.)