The Street-Smart Salesman

GROWING UP IN POVERTY, every day is a battle with fear, stress, and anxiety. Mistakes, misreads, misplays, miscalculations: all can end in missed opportunities that may never come again. The struggles of the poor demand courage, stamina, constant re-ordering of priorities, and the need for winning strategies. Salespeople--from entry-level cold callers to wily veterans--suffer much the same anxieties but lack the street-smart skills that a deeply deprived childhood demands: adapt or die, while still having fun Author Anthony Belli is a millionaire high-performance salesman and sales force manager who grew up dirt poor in East Harlem, New York. Often hungry and without a cent in his pocket, as a child, Belli became expert in the highly creative art of person-to-person negotiation using a variety of risk- managed, cash-producing techniques to underwrite his next slice of pizza, tactics he describes as "eating without stealing." The Street-Smart Salesman imparts Belli's hard-earned wisdom and advice to the lasting benefit of a salesperson's bottom line and ability to sleep at night. Populated with real-life characters from Belli's old neighborhood--deadbeat landlord, hooker with a heart, mobbed-up candy store owner, countless junkies, winos, and wiseguys--this unflinching memoir teaches how the survival skills of the honest poor can be used to maximize success in sales. Belli's wholly unconventional, ghetto-tested strategies include: Minimize cold-calling: Using customers' networks to supply your pipeline Recognition that sales are driven by emotions--not logic, and not price Playing dumb: When to talk and when to shut up Why hope is your enemy--and reality your friend Ways to play a last-minute balky customer Prioritizing for profit And more Belli's hard-earned insights defy conventional sales training wisdom by valuing humility, creativity, attention, and improvisation over the vaunted one-two punch of ceaseless script recitation accompanied by free samples. Take his advice to heart, and watch your anxiety recede as your fortunes grow.