By Seth Godin

My worldview has been shaped by paradox.  Here are a few of my favorites.    
  

• You can’t sell when you’re talking 

And yet most salespeople “show up and throw up”.  One of my early mentors taught me that “if you spend 30 minutes with a prospect and they speak 27 of those minutes, they will think YOU are a genius”.   It stuck throughout my corporate and entrepreneurial career and I think it’s been life changing.  Great salespeople are great listeners and only speak at any length AFTER they fully understand the client’s issues.  Even then, they pause frequently to say, “did I get that right?”   

This concept goes double in personal relationships which I also see as the continuing process of “selling each other”.    I must “seek first to understand, less be understood”.  I find rich irony that great sales advice comes from the Bible.  

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."

Book of the Month: “A Gentleman in Moscow”, by Amor Towles

Editor’s note:  This historic fiction is beautifully written.  Towles adds well-researched context along with poignant social commentary to make it the best book I’ve read in many years.  I’m planning to re-read it so that I might pick up more of the type of excerpts you will see below.  I noted at least a half dozen worth remembering on my first read.

Song of the Month: “Let it be Me”, by Ray Lamontagne

Robin Williams as Elmer Fudd singing Bruce Springsteen 

Were you brought up in a similar manner to me?