Repeating the same story over and over again is nothing new. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Anybody who has ever been in sales and participated in a Sales Blitz may be able to sympathize with Marco Rubio. For the uninitiated, a Sales Blitz is the focus on a single product to multiple prospects one after the other. The simplest form of a Sales Blitz is selling magazines door to door.

    During my college days, I fell for a sales promotion that promised making up to $xxx dollars a month. I showed up for an appointment at the sales office and was interviewed in a front room to see if I was a proper fit for this enormous opportunity. Naturally after passing the first interview, they escorted me to another office for an additional interview. This went on for several interviews with each one ending with the usual " You are just the type of person we are looking for". The last interview was in a back room where they presented me with a script to memorize and practice.

    The general gist of the sales approach was you could sell a magazine subscription for just $.25 cents per day. If they bought several magazines, the price per subscription would drop to $.20 cents per day. I have generalized these numbers since I don't remember the exact details, but the idea was at a year's subscription would cost roughly $100 per year per magazine. My commission would be 25% of that payable after the first magazine was delivered and subscription paid.

    If you are still with me, you probably know what happened next. We left the back door and got in a Van and they drove us (About five outstanding candidates who had proved to be super salesmen prospects) to a neighborhood and let us out to knock on doors. They said they would be back to pick us up after a while.

    I don't remember the details or how many subscriptions I sold but I knew about the third day I decided that the math was not going to make me rich and did not report for the fourth day. Of course, that means no commission and three days wasted.

    It did teach me one thing though. After about the sixth house you could not remember if you had already covered the sales points or not and began to get confused about all the repeats. The second day you would begin to fall back on a few catch phrases that you could spill out like a machine gun. By the third day, you had paired down the spiel to the very basics. You also developed the salesman's sixth sense, which says you can tell whether you were going to make a sale just by looking at the door of the house. If you decided it was not a sale you could just skip that house.

    I decided I would never be in sales trying to pressure someone into buying something they did not need or want.If I were ever to go into sales it would be with a product or service that did not depend on the snap close technique.

    Later in my industrial sales career, it was much easier because we had numerous products and concentrated on industry specific targets. The idea was not to make a sale with the presentation but to introduce a product to customers who had a need for the product. It was a feature and benefit presentation in hopes of building a foundation for future sales calls and eventually conversion to our product.

    But, one thing was still the same. You had a basic outline of the points you wanted to make. After numerous presentations, you could get to the point that you did not want to make the same presentation the same way all the time so you may mix up the order of you points. Just like selling magazines, the lines could blur and you could often forget if you had covered the point with that particular customer or not.

    So, I have great empathy for a Presidential candidate who has to repeat the same points over and over again in front of different audiences and also in front of cameras and news media.

    For that reason, I don't watch the debates of either party. I might audit the next day's highlights just to get the gist of the flow. I have found the best way to judge what a candidate is going to do is to research what he or she has done. I will be the first to admit that a good presentation will always sway a salesman. You have to appreciate the performance if not the content. Comedians had the same act for years and many were left by the wayside when they had to leave the Catskills and go before a TV camera. You need more than a one trick act and many did not survive.

    One thing does ring true however. "Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is trying to change this country".

I think it bears repeating." Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He is trying to change this country".

   Do you want to buy a subscription to this magazine? I can let you have it for just 25 cents per day?