American Optimism vs. German Realism - Salesmanship
How are you doing today? I am doing extremely well! A tale from a super optimistic car dealer in Carlsbad, California with suspenders and an unforgettable curly mustache. He might have had the worst sales day, but was doing extremely well. I like the fighting spirit.
He's so good, say, even if a walk-in teenage customer gapes at a $30,000 Volvo S80, he's still a potential buyer for Mister Mustache. Maybe the teenager has rich parents. I couldn't say that about German salesmanship. True story from a German real estate firm:
A 32-year-old real estate investor from Sweden, t-shirt and jeans, hooks up a meeting for a property worth €1,6 million. Wallks in. The slick German business men ask him whether he'll be able to pay or whether he needs a loan; with that top down eyeball action. Huh? Five minutes later the Swede is perplexed about the question and thanks them for their interest.
Nothing new. Still too many Germans live in the past, judge people on the surface, stick with old processes and could learn a lot from the American art form.
Comments
this is actually exactly like it is... :-)
a swede living in germany; August 8, 2007 11:33 AM
I'd love to witness the eyes on the German real estate guys when they saw the money walk out the door.
Gerd; August 8, 2007 6:23 PM
Good story, and I can absolutely imagine the behaviour of the guy. The part of the swede leaving filled me with grim satisfaction, because you can not hit those kind of people hard enough. On the other hand I think, that the example is a really bad one. There is absolutely no other group of people in Germany who are so ignorant, so ultra-conservative, so nose-up and so arrogant as German real estate agents. Just to make it clear, this is not only my opinion, really every German I know hates them like, well, some kind of really bad illnes. No, even more. If I had to choose between beeing two weeks ill or having to deal with German real estate agents, I would think about the choice for about 500 milliseconds before deciding for being ill.
Additional to this, most of them lack any kind of good education or behaviour, but "compensate" this with the strong determination to do any sort of half-legal or illegal business, especially bribery of virtually everyone whenever needed. If I think again about it, I'd say, taking them as example for anything, is just wrong.
Same way, as if I would point to Enron as an example the typical way of Americans making business.
Ben; August 12, 2007 1:11 PM
I believe Americans have better salesmanship skills and are less judgemental about appearance, at least from my experience. You're right, I am not saying all Americans, but those in the sales business.
Gerd; August 13, 2007 9:50 AM