The World's Worst Vacuum Cleaner Salesman

The Complete Storytelling Course for Speaking & Presenting TJ's Stories about Storytelling and Public Speaking
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Transcript

This is a story I don't know I've ever told anyone. It's so embarrassing. In college, I already thought of myself as a strong communicator. I was a commentator for my college TV station, a commentator for my college radio station. I wrote columns for the student newspaper. I had run for student government and been in student government and given speeches and presentations.

I certainly thought of myself as a good strong communicator. And I was looking for a summer job and I thought, How can I really use my communication skills to make money make my parents happy, make my pet not upset with me and be able to pay for so my college and so of my least spending money. So a couple of people so you should be in sales, you'll make more money as a great so I saw an ad in the newspaper. And it was a sales position. I went there. I was training very intensive training, charismatic training instructor, sales trainer, and I was so excited and I brought the item to be sold home, gave the demonstration to my mother, it was very impressed, gave the presentation to my next door neighbor who was very impressed.

Nobody bought anything. It was a Kirby vacuum. Now, it certainly seemed to me that and now that fine vacuum, because guess what? I don't care anything about vacuum cleaners. I was one of the world's worst vacuum cleaner salesman. It just didn't work.

I no passion for it. It didn't interest me at all on the idea of going from home to home to home, barging in, asking people for favors to take up their time, leaving with nothing potentially working all day long and Making nothing that just wasn't something I could do. So I quit that job after three days. You know what I did that summer. I cleaned out pond scum from ponds, and industrial office parks, not glamorous at all. And I think I made about $3 and 75 cents an hour, but it was something consistent.

In retrospect, you could make the case maybe I would have been better off, muscling it out and maybe could have made more money selling vacuum cleaners. I didn't want to I had no passion for it. And that's my real message to you, which is if you want to be good as a presenter, you've got to believe in what it is you're talking about. Whether you're literally selling something like a vacuum cleaner, or whether you're selling an idea whether you're running for office, Whether you're trying to get approval for new zoning, whatever it is you're doing, at some point, you have to care about it. Now there can be varying degrees of caring. But if you have literally no interest in the subject matter or the product you're selling, it's going to be virtually impossible for you to be good at it.

Unless you have extreme motivation. If you've got 10 children, they're all gonna starve to death if you don't bring home money, that could be motivation. As a college student, I didn't have that motivation. So my advice to you is, there's a million billion things you can sell products, services, policies, beliefs, campaigns, find one you care about, and it's going to be a lot easier for you to be successful at presenting it and selling it.

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