All Selling Aside With Alex Mandossian

Let me tell you about Harvey, a 26-year old who decided to go into the envelope business as a salesman. Keep in mind that envelopes are only used once, so people need to buy them over and over. One day, at 5:30 AM, Harvey was sitting in a car with one of the best salespeople in the company, right outside the manufacturing plant of the biggest envelope manufacturer in all the city. Soon, a delivery truck came out of the stockyard. Harvey and his mentor followed the truck, taking notes on where it stopped. This continued for the better part of the morning, before the truck returned to the factory. They did the same thing the next morning, and the next. Within a week, they had a record of over 100 accounts of the top manufacturing company in the area. Once Harvey had his list, he asked his mentor what to do with it. His mentor told him not to try to steal the business away. Instead, Harvey was to go in and acknowledge who they were already buying envelopes from, acknowledge that he didn’t want to steal the busin