The Warm-up Begins with Liking People

by Danielle Kennedy

Daily business development became a routine for me, and in the course of the activity I learned to enjoy thoroughly the interaction with the public. I have come to find out just how true my Irish grandfather's advice was. He passed it down to us grandkids in the form of a poem:

Smile and the world smiles with you.
Weep and you weep along.
For the cheerful grin,
Will get in you,
Where the kicker is never known.

His advice, along with having a super salesman for a father, and being raised in the friendliest of environments, contributed to my personal sales success. I grew up in the 1950s, on the west side of Chicago, with the Italians, the Irish, and the Greeks. These people could start a conversation with anyone. Either they knew you, thought they knew you, or knew someone who did know you.

"Aren't you related to Ruth O'Leary's niece?"

"No, but my second cousin is."

"I thought so. I went to school with your mother's sister Ann. You resemble that side of the family."

My father, Joe Barrett, loved playing off such conversations. He was one of those people whom everybody felt comfortable talking to, because he loved all forms of humanity. On Saturday, he and I walked down to Jack's ice cream parlor. It was only four blocks away, but sometimes it took hours to get there because Dad had a question or a comment for every other person who passed by. To the boy at the newsstand he would say, "Sell a million of 'em, Johnny. Some day you're gonna own this corner."

As the local police officer would drive by, Dad would yell, "Top of the morning to you, Captain Larry O'Sullivan. Did you catch any bad guys today?"

Once we got to the ice cream place, it was another two hours of yapping. Dad wanted to know about everybody, how they were doing, and most of all he was looking for a good story. I remember saying to him once, "Dad, everywhere we go people seem to know you."

Then he passed on the best advice I have ever received about warming up contacts.

"Honey, never forget as you go through life that there really are no strangers out there. We all have to much in common with each other. We all need to go to the bathroom several times a day. All of us want to make enough money to pay off all of our bills, and still have plenty left over at the end of the month to save or go out and spend on some fun.

"Everyone wants to be a good parent, too. We all love to get a raise, and most certainly we love praise. And most of all we all want to live to a ripe old age, and die quietly in our sleep."

I named Dad's attitude "The Walk-in-Like-You-Own-the-Place Mind-Set." I have never forgotten what he told me and have applied his wisdom to all I serve.

Warming up the prospects before a brilliant presentation starts with a mind-set—the mind-set of a lover of people, of a friend who cares about the other's best interest first, of a salesperson who possesses a strong conviction that he or she is on a mission.

Lane Nemeth possesses the mind-set and the mission.

"All the problems of the world boil down to a lack of self-esteem," says Discovery Toy's first lady. "So everything we create and develop at Discovery Toys is based on building up the child's sense of greatness and wonder. I have never considered myself a toymaker, but rather an esteem builder. It's my life-time mission. It's the mind-set I wake up with every morning and go to bed with every night. It generates so much excitement in my world."

Adapted from Seven Figure Selling © 1996 by Danielle Kennedy